Chapter 11
COOL AND COLLECTED ON THE NEGOTIATING BATTLEFIELD
THOMAS IS INVINCIBLE. No matter whether it’s business development or price negotiations, he’s always full of confidence; he’s forever coming back from the negotiating table with spoils of war. In the workplace, he’s successful in every endeavor, and he’s never disappointed the boss. As someone who was once a professional soldier, he sees negotiating as being a lot like combat or following the jungle rules of survival of the fittest. He locks onto a goal, plans out a strategy, and launches offensive after offensive until the other party capitulates and raises their white flag in surrender.
It sounds like Thomas is a classic business superstar! He’s the kind of man who has a bold vision and strategies; he’s full of energy, talking non-stop, and delight just radiates from him when he’s making business deals, right? Actually, Thomas told me he’s an uncompromising introvert.
AMBITIOUS INTROVERTS
In a Forbes magazine interview, Morra Aarons-Mele, founder of Women Online/The Mission List, said that “We all believe ambitious people are probably extroverts who speak in a booming voice, who are always gathering a crowd. The reality is that there’s no relationship between ambition and personality.” Self-proclaimed as a super-introverted hermit and entrepreneur, Aarons-Mele thinks that people of all kinds of personalities have their own weapons, but introverts often underestimate the business-lethality they can bring.
Another example is Hillary Moglen, the CEO/principal of the leadership development and strategic communications firm RALLY. In her twenties, Moglen discovered that she was a through-and-through introvert, but she struggled unsuccessfully to pretend she was an extrovert because she thought that only extroverts could survive in the workplace. After several years of struggle, she finally looked truthfully at her preferences. She hated social interaction and hard-selling a product to someone. She decided she wouldn’t pretend to be this kind of person ever again, and she left the company that thought she should be more sales-rep-like or chattier. Now, she’s described as “someone you need to work with,” even if she still doesn’t believe she’s good at selling anything.
Aarons-Mele described Moglen as a “role model for people in sales.” She doesn’t chit-chat about her private life that much, and as long as she has an opportunity to meet with a client and develop her profession, she shines like the central character in a hit film. All of her clients come to her by word of mouth because she’s always being praised by her old clients.
Thomas has a similar reputation. When he first started, his coworkers all thought that he was just being mellow when he was negotiating with people, and they were worried that he’d just be pushed over easily. But when he started getting case after case after case and solved all of the thorny problems his company was dealing with, his coworkers were shocked to realize that he was such a dynamic, powerful force to be reckoned with.
HOW CAN THESE INTROVERTED QUALITIES HELP YOU?
Compared with extroverted qualities that everyone admires, such as being chatty and bringing their own spotlights wherever they go, some introverted qualities are not as obvious but are still extremely valuable.
Listening closely
Top-tier headhunter and career coach Dandan Zhu believes that a good sales rep needs to be able to get an answer. With that in mind, companies train their sales personnel on how to ask the right questions in order to understand the client, obtain internal information, or find clues they can use to help them win orders or clients. However, Zhu, an extrovert, often has to “remind myself to shut up.” Even if we ask the right questions, if we don’t listen, we’re no better off than we were before.
The same answer to different ears may end up with results as different as day and night. Morra Aarons-Mele believes that introverts are every company’s secret weapons because they have the ability to listen deeply. Introverts pay attention to the real needs of customers, often with greater effectiveness than those talking with clients for several hundreds of hours. Morra Aarons-Mele shares her own experience winning a big contract. “We had seven meetings. I sat there from start to finish, closely listening to what they [the clients] really wanted.” Extroverts often aren’t able to do this. But for introverts, regular ole listening is familiar and easy.
Developing craftsmanship rather than business attitudes
Because introverts are more sensitive and possess a lot of compassion and empathy, they often quickly understand another person’s feelings. They intrinsically know that everyone wants to buy things, but nobody wants to be sold something. In fact, most introverts won’t try to keep talking to coerce a sale from a customer. Doris Märtin, author of The Introvert’s Secret to Success, believes that this kind of self-restraint actually allows customers to trust the person trying to make sales.
Additionally, introverts are really good at managing long-term and in-depth relationships. Morra Aarons-Mele used this metaphor to describe this reality: “The businessman cares if you’ve made transactions or not, but craftsmen care about whether or not the client is happy even long after the deal is sealed. This is the difference between a business attitude and a professional craftsmanship.” Henry Ford, the inventor of the first mass-produced car, once said something like this: “Selling one car does not mean ending a transaction but starting a relationship.” The professional craftsmanship of introverts is an important factor for maintaining such relationships.
Relying on your analytical abilities—researching, listening, and responding
Columnist Geoffrey James wrote that, different from the traditional business model, which consists of these three steps—introducing, convincing, and adhering—an effective business model should research the client, listen to their needs, and respond. These are three master skills that introverts possess, but that extroverts have to exert more energy to achieve proficiency. Collecting information online, reading, analyzing information, listening closely, and other similar activities all require patience, maintaining a mind open to new ideas, and matching up with the other person’s pace to respond to and successfully seal the deal.
Entrepreneurial consultant Sylvia Löhken believes that introverts can use their expert analytical abilities to scrutinize the positions and conditions of both sides of a business deal. She adds that introverts have an innate ability to put emphasis on harmony and are much more easily able to create a space for negotiation to reconcile the needs of both parties.
THE GOAL IS TO TAKE THE KING PIECE
I once heard of a case where a PR firm was going to hold a mega event. They planned to go through an artist agency in order to invite several international performers and artists to come to Taiwan for a show. The timing was tight, so the ticket sales and advertising had already been kicked off while the firm was waiting for the artist agency to countersign the deal. Nobody was prepared when, two weeks prior to the event, the artists began demanding a price raise of 16 percent or else they wouldn’t come perform. Because both parties only had a verbal agreement, they didn’t have anything in writing. The PR firm could only continue to communicate with the artist agency. To make matters worse, the artists insisted that they wouldn’t talk without being paid more. But if the firm had to pay another 16 percent, it would mean that the entire event would lose money. So, if this was your PR firm, what would you do?
This PR firm’s general manager only spent two seconds figuring out how to settle the issue. He told the project manager, who was sweating bullets at this point, that “we’re going to have a little chat with the artist agency and tell them to take an 8 percent cut of the profits.” When dissecting the stakes of the entire issue, it became obvious that the artist agency’s compensation only came from profits made from the entire event, and if the exhibition didn’t go off at all, then they wouldn’t be able to make a dime. When the PR firm gave them this ultimatum, they considered it, and agreed to share 8 percent of the increase with the PR firm. In this way, the artist agency would make a smaller profit, and the PR firm wouldn’t lose any money. After quickly considering what was at stake, the PR firm executive displayed his analytical abilities by finding a third option outside of taking a financial hit from hosting the event or calling the whole thing off.
When we’re facing down a smaller number of people, introverts often aren’t at a loss. Headhunter Dandan Zhu believes that
When business talks come to an end, it’s often just one person who makes a decision, at most two. An extrovert’s specialty is in facing a crowd of people and fully using their charms. In this instance though, those charms aren’t useful. Put another way, this kind of place is the domain of introverts. In such an event, introverts are not necessarily disadvantaged; even more so, events like these may actually be favorable for introverts.
This quote makes me think of one of the times I went to the US on a business trip. I went to discuss a procurement case that could garner my firm a massive sum of money. Before the negotiations began, we discussed strategies with our American counterpart and went through a rehearsal for these strategies. I sat next to my supervisors and listened closely to their thoughts, and at the same time, I was thinking about how we were going to pull it off. When the extroverted supervisor finished endlessly spouting off his ideas, my American partner suddenly turned to look at me and said, “The quiet ones are often the most circumspect. This is something I’ve learned through several decades of experience. I’d like to hear what Jill has to say.” It looks like an introvert once had him in the business equivalent of check mate.