Jim Camp > Quotes

“The Thirty-three Rules • Every negotiation is an agreement between two or more parties with all parties having the right to veto—the right to say “no.” • Your job is not to be liked. It is to be respected and effective. • Results are not valid goals. • Money has nothing to do with a valid mission and purpose. • Never, ever, spill your beans in the lobby—or anywhere else. • Never enter a negotiation—never make a phone call—without a valid agenda. • The only valid goals are those you can control: behavior and activity. • Mission and purpose must be set in the adversary’s world; our world must be secondary. • Spend maximum time on payside activity and minimum time on nonpayside activity. • You do not need it. You only want it. • No saving. You cannot save the adversary. • Only one person in a negotiation can feel okay. That person is the adversary. • All action—all decision—begins with vision. Without vision, there is no action. • Always show respect to the blocker. • All agreements must be clarified point by point and sealed three times (using 3+). • The clearer the picture of pain, the easier the decision-making process. • The value of the negotiation increases by multiples as time, energy, money, and emotion are spent. • No talking. • Let the adversary save face at all times. • The greatest presentation you will ever give is the one your adversary will never see. • A negotiation is only over when we want it to be over. • “No” is good, “yes” is bad, “maybe” is worse. • Absolutely no closing. • Dance with the tiger. • Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness (Emerson). • Paint the pain. • Mission and purpose drive everything. • Decisions are 100 percent emotional. • Interrogative-led questions drive vision. • Nurture. • No assumptions. No expectations. Only blank slate. • Who are the decision makers? Do you know all of them? • Pay forward.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Should you simply walk away, no hard feelings? Whatever your decision, it will be a good one, because you have retained control of the negotiation.”
― Jim Camp, Start with NO...The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“treat every warm call as though it’s the coldest one you ever made. When emotions run hot and heavy in negotiations, the high-pitched voice is a sure sign of need. The rushed delivery is another sure sign. While needy negotiators raise their voices, negotiators under control lower their voices. So lower your voice in times of inner turmoil. Slow down.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Be ready to walk away. Remember, you only want this deal, you do not need this deal.”
― Jim Camp, Start with NO...The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“being right is very important to most of us. It is a powerful need, and like all needs, it must be overcome.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“If you’re not working on behalf of your own mission and purpose, you’re working on behalf of someone else’s.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Whether we like it or not, it really is a jungle out there in the world of business, and it’s crawling with predators. In my work I often use the image “dance with the tiger,” because the tiger is viewed or even worshiped around the world as the ultimate predator. To dance well—to negotiate well—we must hear the music, we must feel the music, we must be tuned in to our partner—our “adversary”—at all times,”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“It is absolutely imperative that you as a negotiator understand the importance of this point. You do NOT need this deal, because to be needy is to lose control and make bad decisions.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Winning isn’t everything, but the will to prepare to win is everything.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“neediness can have—will have—a dramatic, always negative effect on their behavior. You must overcome any neediness at the negotiating table.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“If there is one classic maneuver played by large multinationals and shrewd dealers in all fields to take advantage of anxious adversaries, this is the one. Build positive expectations with pie-in-the-sky numbers, then start in with the ifs, ands, and buts.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“What you had to say was important to this individual, and she or he wanted to listen. Just to be listened to can bring good thoughts to mind.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“When you begin any new negotiation or find yourself losing control of an ongoing negotiation, you return to—what? Your mission and purpose. And where is your mission and purpose set? In your adversary’s world. And what is embedded deep within your adversary’s world? Their pain. When in doubt, return to the pain. And always nurture, because without it, the pain may simply be too much.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Why would you want to load down a business relationship with a lot of emotional baggage, including guilt, which can be the by-product of “friendship”? It doesn’t work. It doesn’t pay.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“When the going gets tough in a negotiation, your biggest challenge will be your ability to nurture your adversary in spite of everything else going on.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“The only agenda that is valid for purposes of negotiation is the one that has been negotiated with the adversary.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“We greatly enhance our opportunity for a successful deal by putting the adversary first in our mission and purpose. You make your killing—or just a solid profit—only by entering heart and soul into your adversary’s world, business, needs, requirements, hopes, fears, and plans.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“People who are unhappy and frustrated in their work either have invalid mission and purposes—“I want to make a million dollars before I’m twenty-one”—or they don’t have one and are serving someone else’s, and some part of them understands this at some deep level.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“one thing, they don’t have a mission and purpose to guide them. They thereby put themselves on an emotional roller coaster, and this is a fatal error, as we shall see time and again in these pages. Disappointment, excitement, despair, hope—they experience the whole range of emotions, and all because they’re reacting to events over which they don’t have control and ignoring those over which they do have control.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Your ability to blank slate is directly related to your ability to rid yourself of expectations and assumptions, two very bad words in my system of negotiation.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“By following your valid goals you obtain your objective. By obtaining your objective you further your mission and purpose. At all times you set goals and objectives that are as valid as the mission and purpose they serve.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“With both mission and purpose and pain you’re in great shape, but without both you’re wandering in the desert.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“winning is beyond our control, while preparation is 100 percent under our control.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Take responsibility for the bad decision, learn from it, embrace the failure, and soldier on without fear because you are only one decision away from getting back on track. But”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“History and experience should tell each and every one of us, time and time again, that having wealth and/or power as the aim in life will destroy any individual (and many other people, in some instances).”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“But even if you’re good at blank slating, have no expectations and no assumptions, listen well, take great notes, refrain from excessive talking, and don’t spill beans—even if you’re the perfect blank slater, the world outside the negotiation can still intrude on your ability to blank slate. If you’re overly tired, it’s difficult to focus.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“The serious negotiator understands that he or she cannot go out into the world spending emotional energy in the effort to be liked, to be smart, to be important.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Making decisions based on a sense that the adversary seeks your friendship is misguided. They would much prefer your effectiveness.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“You want your human adversaries to see the pain, but you do not want to hit them between the eyes with it. You soften the blow, so to speak, with nurturing.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know

“Goals you can control, objectives you cannot. By following your behavioral goals, you get to your objectives.”
― Jim Camp, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know