What actually makes negotiations work—and why do so many “tough” tactics backfire? In this episode, I talk with professional negotiator Andres Lares, of Shapiro Negotiations Institute, about why the most effective deals rarely come from winning at all costs. Drawing from sports contracts, Fortune 500 negotiations, and decades of real-world experience, Andres explains the “power of nice,” the importance of looking for creative win-win approaches, and why public posturing can kill agreements. He also digs into the hype around body language—what’s useful, what’s overblown, and what actually matters when you’re trying to read and influence people in the real world. Andres also talks about his views on AI-assisted sales-presentation-analysis programs (like Gong and Chorus). We also talk about the realism, or lack of it, in the movie Jerry McGuire. Andres is the CEO and Managing Partner of Shapiro Negotiations Institute and the co-author of “Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions.”
A transcript is below.
Episode links:
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Topics discussed: the role of reading body language in negotiations; the role of adjusting one’s own behavior to influence others; the downsides and self-harm that can result from highly aggressive, win-at-all-costs approaches to negotiation; the so-called “power of nice” in negotiations, a principle which Shapiro Negotiations Institute is founded upon; sports contracts and negotiations; lesser known tactics in negotiations; the benefits of negotiating away from the public eye; the optimal amount of eye contact; and more topics.
TRANSCRIPT
(Transcripts are generated automatically and will contain errors.)
Zach Elwood: Say somebody was asking you to come up with a, a training, like a hundred hour training on negotiations, you know, what, what percentage of the time would you actually, uh, include like reading body language in the, in the training? Because I, I, I would guess like zero, but I’m, I’m, I’m curious what you would say that.
Andres Lares: Well, I mean a hundred hours is a long time, so I’d probably put it, you know, two to five hours type of thing. So a very minor amount. I think it’s an amazing question. ’cause it’s opportunity cost, right? Mm-hmm. If I’m covering behavior and body language, I’m not covering something else. Right. So I like that, where you’re forced to kind of make the trade offs. So the one other thing I would say is if this was a class for a very entry level, zero, absolute zero. If this was a class for very advanced, it would grow.
Zach: That was Andres Lares, a professional negotiator and the CEO of Shapiro Negotiations Institute. He’s also the coauthor of a book titled “Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions.”
As you may know if you’ve listened to this podcast in the past, I’m interested in practical applications of reading and using behavior, and I’m interested in conflict dynamics. Negotiation is an area that involves both of these topics, so I’ve been interested in talking to a professional negotiator for a while. I’ll also say that next week I’ll be talking to the well known FBI hostage negotiator Gary Noesner, author of Stalling for Time, so that will be another episode focused on negotiations in more volatile, chaotic situations.
If you appreciate the work I do with this podcast, please give me a subscribe on youtube or Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. The more subscribes and listens and episode shares I get, the more i’m motivated to keep doing this podcast.
Topics Andres and I discuss in this talk include: the role of reading body language in negotiations; the role of adjusting one’s own behavior to influence others; the downsides and self-harm that can result from highly aggressive, win-at-all-costs approaches to negotiation; the so-called “power of nice” in negotiations, a principle which Shapiro Negotiations Institute is founded upon; sports contracts and negotiations; how realistic the movie Jerry McGuire was; lesser known tactics in negotiations; the benefits of negotiating away from the public eye; the optimal amount of eye contact; and more topics.
Along the way, Andres includes some negotiation examples and anecdotes from his career.
If you’re interested in jumping to the behavior-related discussion, that starts at about 30 minutes into this episode.
A bit more about Andres’ career, taken from the Shapiro Negotiations Institute website:
Andres’ expertise is in deal coaching live negotiations, and has focused on sports clients such as the San Antonio Spurs, Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Browns, Milwaukee Brewers, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Brooklyn Nets. He also works in several capacities with clients across a wide range of industries.
Andres has guest lectured on the topic of negotiation and influencing at various universities and conferences including Ohio University, University of Baltimore, University of Maryland, Queen’s University, University of Iowa, and the National Sports Forum. He annually teaches a highly sought after course on Sports Negotiation at Johns Hopkins University.
Okay here’s the talk with Andres Lares:
Zach: Hi Andres, thanks for joining me.
Andres: Thanks for having me.
Excited to chat today.
Zach: So maybe we could talk first about what your, uh, what the day-to-day, uh, work is like at, uh, SNI. What kind of projects do you all generally work on, if you’d care to share that.
Andres: Yeah, for sure. So we are a global negotiation influence training company. So, um, this is a little bit of everything, but I would say most projects for us are a usually kind of Fortune 5,000 type of company.
A larger enterprise company comes to us and says, Hey. Um, whether it’s our sales team, our procurement team, or project managers or leaders need to improve their negotiation, influencing skills, or there’s, uh, there’s a specific challenge around negotiations or influencing, and so that’s really what we’re trying to address.
So sometimes it’s at the leadership level and it’s kind small scale, very deep. Sometimes it’s that, you know, sales and procurement that can be very large organizations within, uh, within a company. And so, uh, that’s really kind of for the most part the, the work that we’re doing. And it’s typically global.
So the global work is, uh, we train in seven languages. And so I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve gravitated towards more the enterprise. Not that that’s all we train, but the enterprise is because we are, uh, you know, typically able to kind of compliment those, those needs.
Zach: I know, uh, Ron Shapiro, uh, the, the founder of s and i got a start with a focus in sports athlete, uh, negotiations.
Is that still a big focus or, or not so much these days?
Andres: It is. So the, you know, what’s interesting about it? So, uh, Ron is, uh, is still with us and kind of an advisor of the firm. So he ran the company for the first, uh, 23 years. And then about seven, eight years ago, uh, we took over. Uh, so, uh, my partner, Jeff and I have been there already for, for many years.
In my case, seven or eight in his case, right? 15. And we took over. And so it’s continued very much in the same way it was functioning for the first 22 or 23 years. It’s become a little more global. That piece of it has expanded some, but, but the sports, and I mean a couple things. One is the, um, kind of power nice mentality and we could talk more about that.
Today is still very much the case. And then, uh, the other piece of it, it’s the sports kind of evolution and, you know, kind of, um, that aspect is, is still very much involved in that. Uh, we will help teams negotiate player contracts and large sponsorship negotiations across mainly the four major sports in the US We’re doing a little bit now in, in soccer, whereas as the rest of the world calls it football.
But, uh, the biggest and really kind of the focus of the four major sports. That still remains. But the one thing I find very interesting is, you know, we think of sports teams. They sell for a lot of money. I mean, the Lakers were valued at $10 billion recently in a, in a sale. But they’re actually really kinda small businesses in terms of revenues, right?
And so the valuations are very large for, for lots of reasons. But, um, and we could talk about supply and demand and why that’s the case, but in terms of business size and, and sheer, you know, straight revenues and p and l, they’re not really, you know, anywhere near the size of a Fortune 500 might be. So, interestingly enough, the bigger growth comes from the non-sports side because those companies are so much bigger
Zach: besides, uh, sports, uh, um, sports athletes, do you, do you do, uh, deal with a lot of other personal, uh, contract, uh, career contract, uh, assignments in general?
Andres: So not really because we are exclusively really a B2B company.
Zach: Mm.
Andres: So, and as a, so as a matter of fact, what makes us unique is that we are not doing the, you know, the agreement, the negotiation is only happening from the teams that we’re advising them. We are not representing players. So, and my background, and certainly Ron’s background, uh, he was a very, very successful sports agent for many years.
And, and I, uh, did a little bit of stint, uh, working at a few different agencies as well. But this is all on the team side. And so,
Zach: ah,
Andres: it’s all entirely B2B. So we’re coming into a company to train them. We’re helping a team do these, but, uh, we’re never kind of doing the one-off, Hey, can you help me with this agreement or that agreement?
I see the closest, closest will come is, might be, uh, an m and a, for example, where someone’s buying a company and it’s a very large transaction. We may advise on that project, but that’s realistically closer to the B2B than it is the B2C.
Zach: How realistic was Jerry McGuire?
Andres: So, um, I think there’s some pieces realistic. I think so. Um, I was just saying this the other day. So I, I worked with and for, uh, three or four agents in my time before kinda doing this and transitioning to the team side and, uh, and this kind of work and the, they were very, very good people that cared about their clients that, uh, in my opinion, negotiated the right way.
Like they, they really were standup in many ways. And so, um, I think. Jim McGuire, I don’t think positions agents necessarily as bad people, and there’s, they have kinda a bad reputation, but I think, so that piece of it, if, if anything, the fact that he cares so much, I think that’s a really good representation because I think the best agents really are like that.
Um, and the wheeling and dealing, I, I think, is, is pretty accurate in the sense that, you know, if you’re working in this space, if you think about it, you know, an athlete that you might be representing if you’re an agent is 19 years old and signs a 50, a hundred million dollars contract. I mean, that’s more money than most people know what to do with.
And if you’re 17, 18, 19, 20 years old, you know, that’s life changing. And, you know, all of those things I think are pretty accurately portrayed in the sense that, you know, it, it, there’s just so much going on beyond just kind of the on the field performance, right? These are people, right? It’s not like you’re making a manufacturing a widget, and that’s what the product is.
In this case it’s people. And so whether they, you know, break up with their spouse or having trouble with their dad or sister passed away or whatever it may be, all these things affect them. And so I think some of those things are captured very well in, in Jerry McGuire. For both the agent and the players.
Zach: Yeah. I imagine it’s like a lot of movies that probably, um, over exaggerated the, uh, you know, it kind of painted him as like the only person that cares and everybody else’s, you know, out for, uh, you know, very pessimistic, cynical reasons. And I imagine it’s not nearly that, uh, cynical as a whole industry.
Yeah,
Andres: it probably not bad, but I would say, you know, it’s a little bit like, um, you know, used car sales I think fits in that category and people think of kind of these areas where, and I, I think part of that’s because there’s not a ton of regulation. I mean, there’s more and more depending on the leagues, right?
The NFL is more regulation than other, for example. So being an NFL agent, I believe you have to have a graduate degree. And there’s some kinda restrictions that, so, you know, the more regulation there is, the harder it is to get into the, you know, that I think that typically will filter out, um, some of the less serious people.
Um, but it, the, the, the part that you can’t strip away, there’s a little bit of this in the movie that is, is really kind of. So unique to it is that the constant poaching of their athletes. And so if Zach is representing Player X and Player X is a great player and he’s up for a contract renewal extension, it’s those kind of things that really, it’s like, it’s nonstop.
It’s in the locker room and it’s indirect. And then like it’s, then you’ve got, you know, it’s essentially tampering of all sorts happening throughout the life of the contract. And so that’s constant. So you never know if you’re gonna keep your athlete. And so then that also means the agent is sometimes incentivized to do things to keep the client more than what’s best for the client.
And so that’s the one thing I would say that I bring that up. ’cause that’s from an economics perspective, I think the incentives are not always aligned and, and that’s just the realities of the business and that’s the piece that I think makes it very complicated.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: Or one of the pieces.
Zach: Yeah. Thanks for that.
Um, do you have certain stories, anecdotes, that stand out from, uh, negotiations you’ve worked on that you’re especially proud of or that stood out as being especially interesting you’d care to share?
Andres: So I’m proud of, I think, uh, you know, I think the, we talked a little bit about how the power of Nice, so the power of NICE is the, is the book, it’s really kinda the basis for this company.
So the first version was written by Ron, you know, uh, 25 years ago. And it’s been a couple of editions ever since. But really that’s the core of kind of the philosophy that we teach. And so I think for us, any of the proud stories are based around coming to an agreement that’s maximizing the objectives that you have, but at least satisfying the other party.
And so I think, um, one memorable, and for me is the first thing that I did when I came to us, and I actually, the reason I I came to us and I about 15, 16 years ago was that, uh, so Ron was the agent for Joe Mauer. And Joe Mauer is, is an incredible person, an incredible athlete. I mean, he was the Gatorade all American football player and he was the number one pick in the major league baseball draft.
So that tells you what kind of athlete he is. And what made him I think, really special was he was a Minnesota kid. Who got drafted first overall by the Minnesota Twins. And so Ron represented him. And, and so that’s kind of why I came to, to assist. Um, that was my, my first project really. And it was about how unique he wanted to stay in Minnesota and would be willing to take less and want to kind of leave the twins as much room as possible to build a championship team around him.
But he also wanted to be paid fairly. And so that negotiation where it was about maximizing what his total compensation was, but it was trying to do it in a way that was, that was not the only objective, very important to him, was staying there. If he could, he could, he could have gotten more from going to Boston or going to New York, for example.
And so I think that was very successful in the sense that, you know, his many generations set up, so he ended up doing an 8 million or eight a year, $184 million contract. That’s a lot of money. I think it was the second largest or third largest at the time. But he stayed in Minnesota in a way that was.
Feasible for the club to continue to function, right? They didn’t destroy the club and make them totally not competitive. And unfortunately he ended up having some injury trouble and in particular, being a roo, I guess, you know, sadly kind of what happens, but that’s just one example for me. And that was one that kicked things off here where it was so refreshing to see an athlete that wasn’t just like, I wanna get paid the absolute most amount of money.
And the reality is that’s pretty common. I think they wanna make the as much money as possible. That’s usually not the only thing they care about.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Yeah, the, uh, I read the power of Nice and I really like the points about, um, coming up with creative solutions that meet both sides, uh, desires and, and goals.
And I think, uh, Ron made very good case in there for how often we instinctively see a negotiation situation or a conflict situation. As, you know, somebody’s gonna win it. Somebody’s gonna lose it. And that’s kind of an instinctual in us, an instinctual way to see things often. And he, he made some good points about how so many times there’s more creative ways to look at things and parse who gets what and including, you know, non-financial aspects of the agreement.
Um, would you care to talk more about that? Because I, I think, I think that’s such an important point, not just for negotiations, but for, you know, any kind of conflict situation in general, you know?
Andres: Yeah. It’s, um, you know, I think, uh, that’s very much kind of in that power of, of nice philosophy in that you’ve really gotta be, I mean, it comes from an emotional intelligence perspective, right?
It’s, you’ve gotta understand what the ascent cares about and part of your objective would, would be to do that. And so earlier when I said, we’re really a B2B company, right? We’re trying, it’s B2B negotiations, and that means, uh, outta sports, right? If you’re a procurement agent at a large aerospace company.
Or you’re a sales person at a tech company. I mean, the selling of something or the buying of something or all of these deals are the beginning or the extension of a relationship. So it just doesn’t go away, right? If you land a hundred million dollars deal, if you’re selling for a tech company, or you land a airplane part that you’re buying $50 million worth of for the next five years, that’s the beginning of the extension of the relationship.
And so this concept that you’re gonna do whatever it takes to maximize at all costs, doesn’t set you up well for the life of a deal. And then certainly not the renewal. And I think that kind of mentality. And so, you know, one of the best examples I think of very simple one, and, and Ron talks about it in, in, in one of his books, is he was a, he was brought in to help, um, settle a kind of a, a dispute and mediate a little bit.
So I mentioned, you know, we, we typically don’t do that, but there’s some exception, and this was one of them that for pro bono, he was helping settle a dispute. Were a concert master who, I didn’t know this at the time, but it’s kind of the, the second position in an orchestra, right? The concept master was world class.
And what he wanted a increase in pay because his pay was not, was, um, not relatively, not, um, kind of up to par with other concept masters and other similar orchestras. And so they were at an impasse because there’s a pay scale that you have within an orchestra that’s, uh, collective, you know, kind of, it’s a, almost an equivalent of A CBA at the time.
This was some years ago. And so you’re, it’s collectively bound. You can’t, or collectively bargaining bound, and so you can’t really just pay whatever you want. There’s, there’s kind of max and minimums and things like that. And so they were an impasse because the orchestra would’ve been willing to pay more but couldn’t pay more.
And, but that they really weren’t providing anything to the concert master. And so what I loved about it is really the, the way that Ron found a solution was that he kind of pulled away from it all and met first with the concert master and then met second with the orchestra leader, completely separate.
It was not about the negotiation, it was not about the pay, it was not about the precedence. It was just about what they’re looking to accomplish. And when he realized very quickly that the concert master loves the orchestra, wants to continue to be a part of it, but just wants to be really appreciated.
And once he realized that the orchestra really appreciated the concept master and they thought it would’ve been worth the increase in pay, but just couldn’t do it because of the restrictions, it, the solution was easy and anyone could come up with it, right? The solution was they could use points on the credit card to upgrade into first class when they travel.
They could give ’em a bigger office there. They could, you know, do a piece in every one of the shows that would give, uh, you know, appreciation and recognition to the concept master. And really you could kind of separate him in a way where it still didn’t kind of break the rules. And so the solution itself is very simple that anyone come up with.
But the way he got there where he just kind of pulled everything away for a second and said, okay, why is this happening? Like, why aren’t you paying him more? Oh, we are, we’re trying to, you know, and then all those explanations, they’re really getting at the root interest. And so,
Zach: mm-hmm.
Andres: To me, that’s the win-win, right?
You can overuse cliche, that’s where it’s at its core. It’s really understanding what are you trying to accomplish? What am I, and then finding a way to make it work and, and that change the perspective when you’re actually genuinely thinking about the other party.
Zach: And you touched on this briefly, but, uh, I really liked in Ron’s book also, the, yeah.
Focusing on, uh, the long-term aspect of, of doing these kinds of, working on these kinds of agreements and negotiations because, uh, so many people, it seems like so many people have this, uh, sense that you need to be really hard-edged and win at all costs to be a strong negotiator. But as Ron, you know, makes the points in his book, doing that too much.
Taking that approach will really burn so many bridges, and then people won’t want to deal with you. And, uh, you know, nobody wants to, nobody wants to make a deal with you. And, but in so many people’s, people’s mind, and he uses the example from the movie, wall Street, Gordon Gecko kind of mentality. And he makes it, you know, Ron makes a good case that in, in, in the real world, if you’re gonna be doing these things for a long time, there, there’s very big downsides to taking that kind of, you know, I’m gonna win every, everybody’s gonna lose approach.
And I’m curious if, uh, if any examples of that stand out for you in your career?
Andres: Yeah, I mean, uh, a couple quick ones. So one is in sports, I think, um, I like the sports example here because it’s a closed system. So if you look at the NBA, there’s only a certain number of teams. It’s called 30 teams. And so that means there’s only 30 general managers making decisions.
And so what you, what happens is you get general managers that, um. There is trust. So, um, they’re, they’re trusted general managers in the sense that if you have a conversation with ’em, it will not get out in the sense that you could talk about trade opportunities and you could have confidence that it won’t be elite and you have somewhere that’s not the case.
And so what’s interesting is I like that close system because there are teams that I can say, you know, based on experience with certainty that do not get called for trade opportunities, even when they would have a very good matching set of assets that would work for a trade because the other general managers in the league simply don’t trust them.
And that could be ’cause they’re very difficult to work with. It would take forever to get a deal done or that because they leak the news. And so what’s interesting is, I love that example ’cause it is very clearly detrimental that you are being difficult to deal with is costing you a potential trade opportunity.
Mm-hmm. So that’s one. And then at kind of the, you know, the non-sports world, if I think of companies that we haven’t done work with, ’cause it’s not a match, but for example, Walmart. Is known for really, really pressing its partners. We’ve had some clients that work with Walmart and, and struggle with some of those, those, those negotiations and they struggle with ’em because Walmart is, you know, to be able to provide a very low cost to their clients, they need to really squeeze every dollar they can and maximize on the, on the purchasing side.
And so there’s, we have some clients that just will not sell through Walmart, even though that would be a massive account versus, for example, you look at the same clients, and again, this is kind of secondhand more than anything, but with clients we work with closely, there’ll be some that, Costco, for example, is not like that.
They sell at very large scale, but they partner and they truly care about, and, and Costco has that reputation about caring about their partners or employees about everybody. And so they really care about it. So they’re not the type to say, okay, Zach, show me your p and l and I’m gonna drive you down so you’re making 5% profit on my deal.
And if you don’t do that, I’m not gonna work with you. The exact opposite, it’s, Hey, we wanna partner with you, we want this to work for you, we want this to work for us. And so. Um, and then, you know, if you go further down the chain, there is a a, there are a couple of negotiation training companies that still train that way.
And so, uh, do we think it works? No. But in a, in a good way, the market decides for itself, those companies train companies that we potentially would not be a good fit for because we just don’t believe in that philosophy. And equally, there’s, uh, quite a few, especially over the last few years, have come to us saying, look, that’s the way we negotiated.
That’s the way we were trained, but we just don’t believe in this anymore. We wanna move over to this more emotionally intelligent kind of relationship based approach. And so it’s been very successful for us, but I can say, you know, not everyone does it that way, so we don’t believe in it, but it’s, you know, it’s tough to say objectively it doesn’t work.
But certainly that would be our opinion on it.
Zach: Mm-hmm. And you touched on this a couple times already, but the, uh, Ron also talks about in his book, the, the Power of Nice. He talks about the strength of, uh, talking away from the public eye and having more. Private conversations, because often the, when you do something in public, people need to posture and need to, um, you know, try to win, uh, public favor and win the argument in the public eye.
So stepping out of the public eye can be very valuable, and he had some really good anecdotes about that in there. And I’m curious, you know, do you have any, uh, stories to share on, on, on that front?
Andres: Well, so, um, sometimes we get asked to do a little PR and interview on, um, negotiations, major League Baseball, when they’re doing their last CBA negotiation or, you know, um, steel workers or any, you know, auto workers, any of those kind of big unions as they, as they do it.
And one of the things we talk about is, is always that, that if it’s going to the public, then typically you’re in real trouble. Because if it’s going to the public, it’s signaling that there’s kind of a, a loss in confidence, right? And so if if Zach and I could work through it together, then we would work through it together.
It’s just easier. You start adding things outside of your control, these externalities. If you start bringing in public opinion. And, and so I think if you’re playing those games now, it’s, I, I get it, right? If, if Zach thinks that he can get a very significant public support and so he decides to play the game publicly, then all of a sudden there’s some leverage change.
But the question is, does that outweigh the loss and trust from the other party? And, and that’s, you know, that’s really the kind of the, the lubricant that makes it work, right? If, if a negotiation, if there’s, if there’s a lack of trust, there’s less sharing. If there’s less sharing, you’re able to reach less optimal agreements.
That, and that’s, that’s the one other thing about this too, is that it isn’t necessarily black, white people think, oh, the power of nice guys. So it’s, you know, we share everything we hope they share back. The reality is, there’s some things that we talk about in our training is that understanding you, you’re kind of prodding and you’re trying to share some information to see if the other side will share back.
And if you’re in one of these collaborative negotiations, which are optimal, you’re gonna get to the best place because you both share. So now you’re looking at a bigger pie that you can. But if the other side’s not playing along, then you can still be nice about it. But you’re certainly sharing less information, you’re adjusting your approach, and so then you’re really trying to focus more on how, where you divide the pie, not where you first grow the pie, then divide it, if that makes sense.
So it isn’t to say that you’re just kind of sharing information at all times, it being, you know, um, kind of negligent in that way of being unrealistic in that way. You do need to, there’s some things you do to feel out the other negotiator and decide how much you share and when to share and how much to collaborate.
Zach: Yeah. That the, uh, reminds me of, I was reading Gary Neer’s book, stalling for Time, which is he, he’s an ex FBI hostage negotiator, and he talks about the, uh, the, uh, the power, oh, what was it? The, uh, the power paradox or the paradox of power or something about where when you push other people that can result in them pushing you back.
And I think it seems like in a lot of negotiations, people don’t understand how that, that conflict can. If they don’t manage the, the, the relationship that can really end up hurting them in ways that they don’t foresee.
Andres: Well, one quick thing I would say about a, a real life example that I think, um, I’ll, I’ll say generally just, I’m not sure if I have the approval to say exactly what company, but it’s a very large aerospace company that reset us many years ago, maybe seven, eight years ago.
And they were able to do that. They were able to really leverage and press hard all of their suppliers because they were such a big buyer essentially, right? They, they really had the, the economies of scale there. And so everybody wanted to work with em ’cause they’re buying so much. And what they said years ago is they decided seven, eight years ago when they reached out, you know, if things start to change, if what we’ve noticed is if, um, if things change a little bit in one small situation, like, you know, you’re buying a lighting system for your airplanes and all of a sudden a couple of the other suppliers of lighting systems are no longer in business and we have to buy from them and then they get leverage.
They really are aggressive with us because they’re kind of trying to make up for all the leverage you’ve had over the years. And so what, which I give a lot of credit, the leadership for the procurement team said we can’t have the long term, it’s gonna be a liability.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: So before any major issues came up, they ended up changing the way they negotiate, where they’re much more thoughtful about what the other side needs to get out of it.
And they, they really changed the way they negotiate. Now, it’s not that all of a sudden, you know, they started paying 20% more across the board for products, but they would be thoughtful more about, if it’s a tiny company, are you really gonna press them on net 120 days or do you wanna make it net 30 so their business is in a better shape and so they’re able to supply you more effectively because, you know, net one 20 for a tiny company, you can afford it while they can’t.
And, and, you know, there’s many examples of that. And so what I found was incredible and, and this could be one of the other rewarding ones, when COVID hit and there was a lot of shortages they had. Now for three plus years been kind of adjusting the way they were perceived in the market and their relationships with partners.
And so they, in many cases, in most cases, were not getting squeezed back, kind of that payback for all the leverage, but other way around. And so I think that was the test case where two or three years later, you know, something could completely outside of expectation that anyone’s control tested whether they had to advance there or not.
And the answer was a, an absolute yes. Mm-hmm. So I think that was, uh, that was definitely kind of another proud example of this really working and, and being put to the test.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Uh, so you’re the co-author of a book called Persuade The Four Step Process to Influence People in Decisions. Would you care to talk about any, uh, principles from there, or principles outside of that book, uh, that you think might be lesser known that apply to negotiations?
Andres: So, um, I think the, the one that makes the most sense is talk about kind of the four step process that we really outline the book. That’s kind of the basis for the. And I would say this is not completely novel. And, and actually very openly, we talk about how this comes from Aristotle. And so I would, you know, it’s, it’s impossible not to give Aristotle credit for this.
Zach: A note here. Andres talked here about the concepts in his book. To reduce the length of the episode a bit, I’ll summarize the points Andres talked about. Drawing on Aristotle’s classic framework of ethos, pathos, and logos, Andres explains persuasion as a four-step process. First is credibility: if people don’t see you as credible, nothing else matters. Second is emotion: people make decisions emotionally and only later justify them with logic, which is why factors like scarcity, reciprocity, and obligation are so powerful. Third comes logic, which helps people rationalize and defend a decision—often most effectively through clear stories rather than abstract arguments. Finally, Andres adds a fourth step Aristotle didn’t formalize: facilitating action. This means reducing friction and perceived risk—through guarantees, options, or flexibility—so that saying yes feels safer and easier. Together, these four steps explain how influence actually works in real-world decisions. Okay back to the talk.
Zach: So, uh, as, as you know, I, for this podcast, I sometimes get into, um, behavior reading people type topics, and one of my goals with this podcast, uh, occasional goals is to focus on real world practical, uh, impacts of reading and understanding behavior, whether that’s nonverbal behavior, verbal patterns, what have you.
Uh, so I’m curious to ask you, um, you know, obviously there’s a lot of exaggerated and just plain false information about behavior out there, including, you know, running the spectrum from like very. Irresponsible and just plain deceptive kind of behavior expert stuff to more credible, uh, applications. And so I’m curious, you know, what, in the realm of negotiation, um, how do you view, uh, reading behavior?
Do you see it as a highly important thing when it comes to reading nonverbal or facial expression things? Do you see it as a kind of a side thing that is occasionally use useful? Maybe you could talk about your, your view of that, that realm.
Andres: Yeah. I, I, so it’s a, it’s a fascinating area and one that we have spent a lot of time, especially more recently, over the last few years investigating.
So I think we lightly touched on that and maybe 5, 6, 7 years ago we started doing more and more. And, and certainly when we published the book, it’s, it’s a full chapter in the book and we’ve invested a lot of time and it’s a continued research because there’s just so much there. So, you know, our stance on it is that it is definitely a tool in the sense that.
There’s lots of tools you’re using when you’re influencing and negotiating and, and reading body language and, and behavior is important. I think what, what we find, and certainly we find the same thing, there’s a lot of, uh, you know, I would say kind of nonsense out there and it’s hard to separate the signal from the noise, but really it’s about consistency.
And so what I mean by that is generally, you know, there, there’s some behavior. For example, I think the average person would be able to look at a picture of me crossing my arms like this and say, that probably is a, is a bad sign, right? In the sense that it’s, it’s, it’s either neutral or negative. Let’s say they would say, and if we were having, if we were having a conversation at a networking event and I went from staring directly at you with my body position at you and I turned 45 degrees and I was continuing to talk, but I had my body now shifted away from you also probably either neutral or negative.
And then if I were, my hands were open and then my hands started to go towards kind of more of a clench fist. So you start to, those are objectively typically likely neutral or negative. But the concept that I have crossed my arms when we’re in a conversation does not mean and is actually very low probability.
It means I don’t like what Zach’s talking about. I am displeased with the question that he asked. If now you are doing multiple things together, if the rate of my voice, the tone of my voice, those could be too potential. Or I’m combining the clench fist and the crossed arms and the 45 degree away, or looking away more, or whatever it may be.
When there’s consistent multiple aspects that are doing the same thing, then you can read more into it. And so the idea is, I think ironically, while we have a chapter on it and we’re talking about some of these things, the arms crossed the face, all these things. It’s not so much about looking out for those.
’cause I think naturally we see those. It’s more about being thoughtful about, you need to see multiple things coming together because I could be crossing my arms because I’m cold and you, you overreact and change the subject and now start getting really sensitive about whether you think this is not resonating with me.
But the reality is, there’s nothing there not to mention that if you typically were a very strong communicator, you could ask something that would help, you know, give them an a chance and an out to change the topic of conversation, for example, and see if they take it or not. So it’s really kind of the, you wanna see the full body of work, what they’re saying, what they’re doing.
And one last thing I would say, and you know, curious your take as well is that this also falls under, so Dr. Mehrabian, A-U-C-L-A, uh, former professor there, um. We had something called the Mehrabian Law that a lot of people call it, which is that 93% of what you communicate is not the words that you say. So it’s the body language or the tone.
Now, um, we did some, we’ve done quite a bit of research on this, and I’m not sure that we’re finding the same 93%, but whether that is or is not, I think it is absolutely the case that what you say is a small part of whether it’s 7% or 20% of what you, and you know, how you say it, your body language, all those things are very, very important.
So even just shedding light on that is super, super important, I think for kind of the behavior, body language modeling, predicting, reading, all those things.
Zach: A quick note here: you’ve likely seen this kind of statistic that Andres is talking about; you can find alleged behavior “experts”, and other people just talking about behavior in passing, say things like that communication is anywhere from 70 something to 90 something nonverbal. This is just a pretty egregious misapplication and misinterpretation of what Mehrabian had studied and what he was talking about. Also the work he did could be criticized in various ways, also. Clearly our words convey a huge amount of meaning; if they didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to get much meaning from the words I’m speaking now. If you want to learn more about that, one good resource is checking out the Wikipedia for Albert Mehrabian and looking at the sections about misinterpretations and criticisms. Okay back to the talk.
Zach: These things can be hard to talk about in nuanced ways because it’s like a, you’ve got the, uh, I mean obviously there are obvious examples of people’s body language and facial expressions communicating information, right?
Like that’s, that’s true. We’re all aware of that every day ways that happen, uh, that happens. Then B, you’ve got the, the two separate areas of, you know, reading other people and making use of behavior. And then the area of like finessing and manipulating, uh, your own presentation to other people, which, you know, those can be seen as entirely different topics because you could be, you know, uh, adjusting your presentation even if you know that the things you do don’t necessarily mean much, but they might have an impact on other people.
Um, and then, yeah, so as I’ve told you, you know, to be transparent, people who listen to this, my podcast and I’ve told you my view is it’s actually when you look at, try to look at practical, real world examples of making use of other people, reading other people’s behavior. I find that it’s really hard to find really practical examples of how this plays out in, say, law enforcement or negotiation.
Because for example. Like, I, I think a lot of examples say you were in negotiation or similar situations. I think a lot of the examples you would find of say people like, you know, you reading someone for them, being upset about something, somebody said, I think in a lot of those examples, uh, they’re not actually trying to hide that, right?
Like they’re, they’re, they’re, uh, assuming they’re like pretty, pretty decent, uh, you know, fairly skilled people. I think a lot of the examples of them say, you know, rolling their eyes or getting a, you know, a tensed face, if they’re upset about something in a negotiation, they’re probably gonna say something about that.
So when it comes to like the practical uses of like when reading someone might actually sway your approach or decision, I think it’s hard to find many of those practical examples. And that’s not to say that it doesn’t happen because I think I, I think I’m pretty good at, you know, getting a sense of whether, you know, some, someone might be reacting in a, in a certain way to something somebody said.
But I think. Uh, and maybe, maybe there’s value to getting a sense of that earlier rather than later. Right. Uh, but I’m curious, you know, are, are there examples you can think of where reading somebody actually changed a, a, a major decision about how you approached a negotiation or, uh, you know, a text you, text you took?
Andres: So, um, this will be a, a kind of a crazy two very short stories that deviate us, but hopefully are, are interesting to think about for, for both us and for, you know, for listeners. But, so one is, if I look at, so we’ve got a, a deep bench of facilitators that are world class. So I do very limited facilitation because we have better than me, right?
So just, that’s the reality. You gotta be self-aware of what you’re particularly good at. So I do more of the advising and, and run the company. But there’s, you know, we have so many very skilled facilitators. So what I like to do from time to time is I’ll kind of, if, if I’m anywhere near them, I’ll go watch them do the training programs.
And it could be training programs of six people in a boardroom, or it could be, uh, a hundred people in a big conference for a couple hours. Or it could be a keynote for 2000 people. And what I will find is that our best facilitators are able to make some adjustments that the audience doesn’t realize took place.
But I do, because I know what the plan content was and what the plan was, and they make the adjustments based on reading the audience. They may cut a little bit of content ’cause they didn’t think it was resonating. They may speed something up or add something no one will ever know. And that is done entirely on kind of reading the room.
Right. And, and that is, and reading the room. And, and that is a hundred percent behavioral, like, or, uh, body language because mm-hmm. You know, while a few people may chime in, even our, our keynotes tend to be pretty interactive, but that’s getting a sampling of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 people out of, could be 20, a hundred, 500, a thousand, and.
So that is now in their case, I think there’s, some of it is natural and I think a lot of it is experience based. They’ve done
Zach: right.
Andres: A thousand presentations.
Zach: Right. They get a sense, they get a sense when people are like, uh, you know, starting to look at their watch or shuffling a bit more than usual or like looking
Andres: Exactly.
Zach: Looking
Andres: away and they catch it early.
Zach: Yeah.
Andres: And that’s the difference, right? I think, you know, so, uh, someone who’s not skilled would, would catch it towards the end and it’s kind of too late to shift. They are so skilled, they can catch it early, make the adjustment and do it so smoothly. No one even knows they made an adjustment.
So I would say there is definitely, and if you look at very, very good presenters like in front of a boardroom, they’re able to engage like, hmm, I think Zach’s gonna be a problem. And so they’ll engage Zach before he has shown almost to anybody else in the room that he’s gonna be a problem. That might be because.
Of some reactions that you’ve had. So I, I do think mm-hmm. There’s some of it there, but yeah, again, I, I think generally it’s overplayed. And then the other one, and
Zach: there’s a, there’s a map over to, you know, when I interviewed a jury, uh, consultant, there was some map over to that, you know, reading jurys reactions and which I, which I totally, you know, I for sure.
I, I agree. These things can, can, can play a role. Yeah.
Andres: And those are natural, right? I mean, if you think about, um, I can plan. Yes. I think something you said earlier I think is so important and we, we just, it has to be talked about again. Is that a good negotiator? A sophisticated negotiator will be responding with both what he says and his tone and his body language, right?
So we talk about a tactic might be the wi this is now an extreme, but I think it’s a good example that if we’re working through, and I’m expecting you to make a pitch and I’m hoping you pitch something at a hundred thousand dollars, right? You’re, let’s say you, you’re selling me something and I’m hoping the pitch will be at a hundred.
If you come in at 120. If I’m a sophisticated negotiator, not only when I say, well, that’s too high, right in the moment, I’m probably gonna flip and be like, Ooh, 120. And you know, your eyebrows are raised or something. Yeah, exactly. Eyebrows will raise and I’ll, I’ll lower, I’ll, my head will go backwards some, and my hands will open some and my eyes will open up.
And so, and that now part of that, some of that is natural, right? You were hoping for a hundred, it’s 120. It’s more than you thought, but you exaggerated some because you’re sophisticated and you thought about it beforehand. If they do, you know, if it’s more than 120, if it was more than 150, I might say there’s just no deal to be had here and walk away.
Now that might have been pre-planned, and if you’re sophisticated, you may do that. And so you know, then you’re reading into something. But that body language is really kind of the body of the work. It would’ve been the same if they had no body language. If you were just on a phone call and they said, wow, that’s crazy.
Because you can’t see the body language on a phone call, but because they’re aware of all the, you know, all it’s being communicated, they’re thoughtful about the body language along with the tone along what they say. So that’s that one. And then the last kind of crazy thought, if it’s worth thinking about is there was a, a former classmate of mine from many, many years ago ended up doing a bunch of research and I came across it some years later when they were doing I think their masters of PhD around DJs and they would also do the same thing if there’s some DJs that are particularly in tune with the audience and can change the, so the kinda the beats for a minute, the BPM of the songs they’re playing and adjust the style in order to engage more dancing.
So they would literally have, cameras would track how much dancing was occurring and you could track alcohol sales, these two factors that would say people were having a good time and they did a bunch of kinda experimentation and research and there was clearly some DJs that were more capable of adjusting to kind of that going downhill and then picking it back up and vice versa.
Things that they would be doing outside of the set that was predetermined. Mm-hmm. And so again, I think, and I know that is totally outside of the space we’re talking about in some ways, but I think exactly the space we’re talking about in others where that does have an impact. And, but you know, the million and dollar question is how much of it is nature versus nurture?
How much can be trained, how much is natural and Right. So that opens up a whole can of words, but I, I think it’s worth kind of being open to the fact that it can influence
mm-hmm.
Andres: And it can be improved, but I think we should be realistic with both of those.
Zach: Yeah. It’s tough to talk about because some people, you know, the, in a lot of discussions there can be this kind of like binary sense of like, you think it’s meaningful or it’s not.
And it, and it, the thing I try to focus on is like, well, no, I think it, it does play a role, but I also think like the amount of, there’s, there’s also really exaggerated, uh, a lot of exaggerated information about how big a role it plays. And I guess, you know, one way to, uh, and, and one way to ask the question to you is say you somebody.
Was asking you to come up with a, a training, like a hundred hour training on negotiations, you know, what, what percentage of the time would you actually, uh, include like reading body language in the, in the training? Because I, I, I would guess like zero, but I’m, I’m, I’m curious what you would say that.
Andres: Well, I mean a hundred hours a long time, so I’d probably put it, you know, two to five hours type of thing.
Um, oh yeah.
Zach: Okay.
Andres: And, you know, so very, very minor amount.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: Mm-hmm. You know, the biggest factor would be how much we do that. I think it’s an amazing question. ’cause it’s opportunity cost, right? Mm-hmm. If I’m covering behavior and b language, I’m not covering something else. Right. So I like that, where you’re forced to kind of make the trade offs.
Mm-hmm. So the one other thing I would say is if this was a class for a very entry level, zero
Zach: mm,
Andres: absolute zero.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: Mm-hmm. If this was a class for very advanced, it would grow.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: And, and I think it would grow because what I have found is when we do this type of work, the mere modules on body language.
Are, I find, increase the emotional intelligence of the participants.
Zach: Hmm.
Andres: So I, it’s, and, and one of the things that we’ve done, and actually is if I force you to try to look very carefully at what you’re doing with your eyebrows and your arms and your legs and, but in subtle things, you may never remember that and use that again, but I have seen for sure with confidence that you will always be more thoughtful of what the other side’s doing.
And there’s this level of authentic interest and what the other side is saying and how they’re saying it, that that in itself actually improves performance. Certainly I can say that with confidence and so Right.
Zach: Just
Andres: becoming aware
Zach: of it more.
Andres: Yeah. Knowing,
Zach: knowing it’s a dimension of
Andres: some sort.
Zach: Yeah.
Andres: What’s the, it’s like the, what was the main, the factory experiment where they said, Hey, we’re gonna watch you, and the performance went up and just because the mirror we’re gonna watch you, the performance went up. Right. And it had nothing to do with like the lightings that they were doing. And I forget there’s experiment that had that, and that’s kind of the example of that.
Zach: A quick note here: Andres response was interesting to me. It got me thinking about how i’d answer that question when it comes to poker. If you didn’t already know, i’m the author of some respected books on poker tells and behavior; that work is why i ended up creating this podcast. And my stance is that reading behaviors in game-scenarios is entirely different, and much more productive, than in non-game, real-world scenarios; simply due to non-game scenarios being so much more complex, and not involve discrete, granular goals and actions and such . But if someone asked me the same question; asked me to create a 100 hour training on teaching people poker, and decide much would I’d devote to teaching how to read people, i would say something similar here. I would say if it was an entirely amateur, never-played-poker-before audience, i would devote almost no time to reading behavior; i would probably devote maybe 1-2 hours to the concept, and I would mainly focus it on trying to make players more stoic and not give anything away, because trying to get beginner players to avoid common behavioral leaks is much more easy than it is to get them to successfully read and exploit other players’ behavior; there’d be too much opportunity cost to studying behavior much; the focus for beginning players would be almost entirely, like 98% strategy, if i were doing it. I think Andres might say something similar about this; if it were a class for people entirely new to negotiation, you might devote an hour or something to trying to get people to know the importance of being stoic and avoiding the more obvious leaks of thought and emotion ; making people aware of that dimension of information leakage would, on its own, make them more stoic and less likely to leak info.
And, similar to what Andres says here, if it were a more sophisticated, experienced class of poker players, i would devote a good amount more time to reading people and making use of tells; maybe that would be 5 hours of the 100 hour training, maybe a little more or a little less depending on how experienced they were. Like if they were highly experienced, that’s when i’d start devoting a lot more hours, because there’s less opportunity cost to not focusing on strategy, and also more experienced players will be in a better position to understand and make use of tells.
This goes along with my recommendations in my own poker tells products, where i make it clear to people they should only be thinking a lot about reading poker tells if they are already a strategically strong and quite experienced player.
Back to the talk…
Zach: I think another aspect that makes it hard to talk about you, you briefly touched on is, is like some people are just. I mean, maybe even most people are pretty good at picking up such things. But then I think you have a, a certain number of people that are just very bad at such things, which, and those are the people that are most likely to be like, oh, I found that training hugely valuable because they’re the people that are, you know, maybe, maybe even the minor percentage of people that are, that are just like, wouldn’t pick up cues that people are getting impatient in a room.
Whereas most people would pick that up pretty easily. So I think that also like muddies the, the field of like, and can help explain why some people will write reviews of such trainings or such books and be like, I found this all to be entirely common sense. And then other people would perceive the same training and be like, it helped me a lot.
Right. So it helps explain that, that range. And I, somebody pointed out to out to me recently a hedge fund, uh, a per person who works in hedge hedge funds in New York, who was saying, you know, we were talking about, uh, I was giving my usual spiel of like, you know, when people ask me. About reading behavior.
And the best, you know, best ways to, to use that in non-game real world scenario is I tend to say like, oh, I would, I wouldn’t focus on that. I would focus on logical deductions about what people say and, and things like this and, and actual logical approaches. But he was saying, well, maybe you undervalue behavior because it’s more intuitive to you.
So you see a lot of the stuff as common sense that other people wouldn’t see as common sense. And I thought that was a good point, and I think that helps explain those very different perceptions of, of the, of the trainings in that area.
Andres: Yeah, I mean, I think for all these soft skills, I think it gets exactly spot on where, you know, you may pick up on things that people don’t and vice versa.
They’re gonna pick up. Maybe it’s, you know, the tone or the approach or,
Zach: mm-hmm.
Andres: Yeah. And I think, you know, we can all think about that if you know a spouse or a friend where you might leave a party. And that certainly happened where it’s really interesting if my wife and I are on the ride back and we might talk about conversations that we are both in.
She’ll picked up on something like, oh, I wonder if this person’s doing okay. ’cause they seem like they were struggling, and I didn’t pick up on that. And she, and I’m like, well, you know, do you feel like he really likes his job because this? And she’s like, oh, like I didn’t get that sense either. It’s incredible that we’re in the same party potentially having in some of this exact same conversations.
Mm-hmm. But what we picked up on was, was different. And so I think that’s, um, and that’s, you know, that’s human nature. And that’s, I think that’s what makes this all very interesting. Right. If you know mm-hmm. If you’re robots, then this all goes away. Right. You just say what you mean. And, uh, it’s very direct and there’s none of this comes into play.
So that’s what makes it
Zach: interesting. Yeah. There are, there are such different skills we have, because, I mean, sometimes I’ll be completely blind to something and somebody will q cue me into some behavior related thing and I’m like, oh yeah, you’re right. How did I miss that, that, that that was some information.
And then. Other times, you know, other people are blind to things that I, I, I thought were very pertinent pieces of information. But yeah, so it is very interesting the different experiences and skills we all bring to the table. Yeah, yeah. Uh, I’m curious, in, in your book, uh, you talked about, uh, eye contact and how to approach it, and I’ll be transparent, and I’ve talked on this podcast about how I might be, you know, a bit on the autistic side.
I, I, I struggled with, I’ve always struggled with eye contact. It always seemed like something that came very naturally to other people that I had to really think about. Like, how much is too much, how much is too little? And you talk about that in your book, and I’m, I’m curious, is that something, uh, you, you train people on is, is thinking about eye contact and do some people have a, you know, are, are some people maybe more like me and need more, uh, conscious thought about how to approach those things when it comes to negotiations?
Andres: This fits into that category where we’re. We are trying to push them to think about it more than we are training them to do it. Because I think there’s gotta be a level of authenticity that mm-hmm. If you’re feeling very uncomfortable eye contact, we’re gonna have to push you somewhat outside of your comfort zone where you’re gonna have to do some of it.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: Otherwise, I mean, there’s definitely research to indicate, so this is, this could open up a can of worms, but there’s a lot of AI systems that, uh, do a lot of analysis of everything we’ve just talked about. Right. So like, you’re doing a video role play and the system will, uh, or it could be a real sales call that was recorded and it’ll analyze everything.
And I love it because it brings attention to this. I hate it because. We have so much research to indicate that we’ve done firsthand or secondhand, that there’s absolutely, you cannot say Zach, 70% eye contact is best at all times. You should do that. I mean, that’s,
Zach: yeah.
Andres: So
Zach: you’re saying, you’re saying these, you’re saying these, these people might not know there, there are these programs that are analyzing behavior, including eye contact and eye direction and such,
Andres: and it would tell you after the fact.
So for example, if you know, and, and what happens is, what I love about it’s, we will come into an organization that says, okay, we want you to train our salespeople to negotiate, and there’ll be 500 sellers and they’re using some of these programs that review all of their video calls they have with clients and it’ll give ’em coaching.
So what I love about it is you’re getting objective coaching in the sense that it is data-driven. Right. It’ll say, for example, definitely if I, if I were to review, so after we do training, sometimes we’ll do kind of coaching in small groups. And if I were to review one and I said, Zach, you talked 77% of the time of the sales call.
I can say with 99% certainty, without looking even more to the sales call, that’s probably not good.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: You should not be doing all the talking for yourself and, and if you’re negotiating on something, it just, that’s counterproductive. Right. You’re missing on so much information, engagement, all these things.
And then I would look, how many questions did you ask? Have the answers to, again, two and 45 minutes. Probably not good either. So that there is objectivity there and, and what I like about is it the application does it or many of, ’cause there’s quite a few do a very good job of that.
Zach: Hmm.
Andres: What I don’t like is they go a lot step further and they say, well, Zach, your eye contact on the screen in the sense that like where you were looking away or whatever it may be was 25% and you really gotta get it to 75% when you’re talking.
And so conceptually I appreciate the value of eye contact in that again, objectively. Eye content is important. If you totally don’t look at someone in the eyes at all, they’re gonna think you’re lying. There’s plenty of evidence that they keep there. Right. There’s a perception
Zach: even if it’s not true. Yeah,
Andres: exactly.
You to,
Zach: you have to think about perceptions even if it’s not
Andres: true. Exactly. And so, so yes, being aware of that, but to say that on every sales call you should be looking 70%, that is, that is such a overgeneralization without kind of understanding context. That, and, and that’s a bit of the concerning part for me, where it’s like we’re just kind of telling people this is a fact when, when it’s not.
And so that’s the eye, like eye contact for me. So people to understand. And so we might show ’em a video or I might do it with ’em and a role play up front where they don’t know I’m doing this, but I’d be talking to ’em and I’d say, you know, and so I’d say, what’s your confidence in me right now? I’m looking down the entire time I looked it up at you for two seconds.
Out of the 45 second role play. What’s your confidence? And everyone in the room is naturally, it just comes out. They’re gonna say, you know, two outta 10, they’re gonna rate it.
Zach: Yeah, you’re
Andres: shady. I got the next one. I’m gonna look at you quite a bit. Not ridiculous, not a hundred percent, but most of the time.
I’m gonna increase the confidence in my tone in my voice. Now what’s your confidence in me? They’re gonna say, okay, eight outta 10. Okay, well, so eye contact matters, but to say that it’s gotta be 70% when you’re talking, um, I think it’s kinda like listening. I mean there’s gotta be a genuine
Zach: Yeah.
Andres: Authenticity. Be authentic to you. Exactly. Yeah. It’s gotta be authenticity and there’s gonna be a general interest and yeah, you might have to remind someone they have to look at it a little bit more, but, but that’s really kind of the, the box in which we operate.
Zach: Well, now you’ve got me, uh, this is opening up a whole new area of interest.
Can you name a few of the products that do this kind of analysis? I wasn’t really aware of these things.
Andres: Yeah, yeah. So, uh, a couple. So Gong, it’s gong.io and then Chorus is another one. There’s quite a few.
Zach: Hmm.
Andres: So, and what’s interesting, so for, for us this is, is we’ve got a bunch of patents pending in this space because we have our own video role play apps.
And that’s what we differ from ev, almost everyone I’ve seen in the market, which is I want the objective things like, I want your speech pace because I wanna be able to talk about that.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: I want your tone because there’s some aspects of that that are completely objective. I want how much you spoke, how many questions you asked, all of those things.
How long were the times you spoke in a row versus interruptions from the other party. All of those things. How many ums you used. Okay. Those are all objective that you can review and potentially you could with a coach or by yourself, improve on.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
Andres: Mm-hmm. What we don’t wanna do and stay away from is some of these things that are just gonna, like I said, you know, it’s gotta be 70% eye contact.
You have to ask five questions per hour.
Zach: Right?
Andres: Right. And so that depends. This is a first call, a discovery call. You should probably ask 10, if this is a closing conversation, it’s 10 minutes. You may not want to ask any ’cause you want to come, come off as like. You know, there, there may, it depends on Myra, your strategy.
I can’t tell you how many questions you should ask if I don’t know your strategy. Right. And so that’s kind of where I’ve become, you know, um, hesitant to
Zach: Yeah, that
Andres: portion.
Zach: I mean, that’s what get gets me about some of the, you know, the, the behavior experts who try to coach people in presentations. Like I, I, I understand it is important as you, as you say, there’s, there’s nuance in terms of, uh, adjusting, trying to manipulate perceptions is important because whether it’s, whether the presentations are true or, or not, the perceptions are real.
But then if you, yeah, like you say, if you, if you lean too much into do this, do that, do this, but in some sort of rote way, you end up creating, you know, like an army of all the same people who might come across as inauthentic because it, they’re just like doing these. Behavioral things that, uh, you know, there, there’s, there’s, there’s like the risk of coming across like some, you know, the stereotypical used car salesman, like full of confidence and, you know, trying to, trying to manage you.
And, and people can shy away from that. So you want to, you want to have some level of authenticity and comfort in your shoes and not come across as somebody who’s managing perceptions too much. Yeah.
Andres: And one last thing I would say about this in a little bit related is that one of the fa fa or favorite programs that I have, and I mentioned I don’t typically teach much, but there’s a two person, so there’s two facilitators we do for kind of the larger, uh, advisory accounting, you know, the big four type of, of companies.
And so we’ll, with a partner or director, they’re, they’re very seasoned and we do some role playing with them on camera and then they get coached.
Zach: Hmm.
Andres: And one of the reasons we, we, I, I, I particularly enjoy this one from time to time, I’ll just do it to kind of stay sharp, is that the coaching isn’t. Zach, why’d you do this, Zach?
Why’d you do that? The coaching is entirely based on what was your intent and did you accomplish it? And it changes the way they see it, right? Like they’ll start off a meeting with something negative or positive. And so then the question is, why did you do that? What was your intent there? Now sometimes they’ll say, here’s why.
And so whether it worked or didn’t work, then it’s about execution. But sometimes it’s, I, I didn’t have an intent there. I that just kind of came out naturally. It’s like, well, then probably we should think about how we start our meetings because you kind of directed down this path that you never got away from in the entire meeting in this role play, and you went down that path.
So if you did it intentionally, and then whether it worked or didn’t work is one thing, but if you didn’t do it intentionally, it just, it just was happening then that is the first learning is there’s gotta be a, you know, you, you have to understand that this has an impact or the way you open a meeting, right?
If I were to say, you know, Zach, these are the three things we disagree on. I want to meet with you today to make sure we can figure out all three. That is a very different tone. If I were to say, Hey, Zach, I love that we’re on the same page about working together, and out of the 57 things we’ve agreed on all but three, which is awesome.
Mm-hmm. And so what I wanna do is just work on these last three things. Mm-hmm. That is a completely different opening that will lead to a complete different meeting. Mm-hmm. And I can tell you that for sure, being, advising a lot of these and doing role plays with, you know, real, these negotiations that are kind of based on real negotiations that occurred.
And so that’s the piece that I find very interesting is, so with them it’s about intent and execution of the intent. And so that’s why some of these apps can’t tell you whether that’s right or wrong because it doesn’t know what you were trying to do. It can tell you whether, you know, it was effectively done, but the reality is you don’t know what the intent was.
So I, that’s the context with, I think it has to be seen. Mm-hmm. Now, obviously if some things are totally wrong, right? If, if I, and we could go into those, but that, that’s, those are typically, especially at a partner director level of big four, they’re not gonna be that common. They’re not making atrocious, you know, obvious mistakes generally.
Zach: Um, yeah, this has been great. Andres, uh, do you, before we go, do you have any more, uh, stories, anecdotes that come to mind related to reading, opponent behaviors in a negotiation setting? Or, or anything? Anything come to mind there?
Andres: Not, not that I can think of. Okay.
Zach: Not,
Andres: not
Zach: sure
Andres: was worth sharing.
Zach: Okay, cool.
Uh, I think we’re good. Yeah. This, this has been great. I really appreciate you coming on and talking about some of these things and, and more nuance than I, you know, than I think is often talked about. I thought it was a great talk.
Andres: Same. I mean, it’s, it’s a pleasure. I think, uh, as I mentioned, I think we’ve put a lot more time and effort into research in this and, um, and, you know, it’s interesting to me personally, it’s certainly interesting to us and I professionally, um, so yeah, I mean it’s, it was a, it was a very interesting conversation that I think kinda inspires me to continue to, to look into this and the way the word used early was practical, and certainly that’s the piece, right?
It’s like. All this research then has to go into something that’s practical, whether it’s practical guidance of what to do, what not to do, what to be aware of or, or whatever it may be.