How to Trade Your Way to a Better Deal Without Moving Your Price | Ep 977

**Alex Hormozi** (0:00)
Over my career, acquiring and scaling businesses for acquisition.com, I've done a lot of deals. A lot of these things I didn't actually learn from books. I learned them from mentors and actually seeing them do it and learning it like in the streets, in the real world. Most itty bitty tactics don't actually drive the needle. There's three contexts that you're gonna use each of these skills with. The first is with employees, and this goes both ways. If you're an employee trying to negotiate with an employer, then that applies. The second is gonna be vendors. Now this also applies if you're a vendor who's dealing with customers. And then third, you've got what I would consider partners. This is when you do deals, M&A, things like that, investment. So these are kind of the three big vectors that all of this stuff applies to. So if you're like, I'm not sure if this will work for me, you for sure, even if you don't have a business, you are an employee, and if you are an employee and you don't want to use that, you certainly have vendors that come to your house and do things for you. Like, this is the fruit of life. You have to negotiate, and you get what you negotiate, not what you deserve. That may sound not fair, but it's also the truth. I learned this from a different mentor. They call it MISOs, but basically, Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers. So what does that mean? That means that I present Offer A, Offer B, and Offer C, or just Offer A and B. It doesn't really matter. You can have two offers, you can have three offers, and each of these have different prices and terms associated with them. And so what happens is when you make multiple equivalent offers, it's like embedding reciprocity. It's like, hey, I'm trying to be reasonable. I just want to figure out what works best for you, because all three of these work for me, but which one's better? This is a way of actually teasing out what someone else's priorities are if they're not willing to tell you, because a lot of times, you want to hold your card close and not say, what are the things that are most valuable to you? Now, over time, you build some trust, you build some rapport, and you will be able to share, because ideally, something that's important to you is not important to them, and they give you this one, and something that's important to them that's not important to you, you give to them. And that's fundamentally a good negotiation. One of the big things that I misunderstood in the beginning is that I assumed negotiation was a zero-sum game, and it's never a zero-sum game, because you're a different person, you have different needs. You're always going to have some things that will be more important to you than other people. And in that situation, it's like you want to just interlock the things that matter most to each person. That's where it becomes a positive sum game. Both parties are better off from basically giving and taking in places that are less meaningful to them and more meaningful to the other person. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that presenting multiple equivalent offers simultaneously increases the likelihood of finding mutually beneficial solutions. This approach demonstrates flexibility while also maintaining your core interests, because you're the one who's presenting all the offers. It's almost like a reverse assumed close. Hey, I'll do any of these three things, and you just pick the one that works for you. And then the thing is they're picking any of these I said already worked for me. Let me give you a real-word example. So let's say option A is lower monthly fee with a longer commitment. Option B is a higher monthly fee but has premium support. And then option C is a pay-as-you-go with slightly higher rates but maximum flexibility. So all three options will give you similar overall value, but you might look at them and be like, I just want to know which one meets your needs better. From their answers, you'll be able to understand their motivations. Now, let me tell you some knowledge from the street. If someone gives you multiple offers, if you're on the other side of the table, what I like to do is say, I like the best part of this one, and I like the best part of this one, and I like the best part of this one, and why don't we make an offer that is the best of all three?
And I learned this from my friend Sharon.
Guy's done more deals than anyone I know. I was like, ooh, that's good. So the flip side is you could ask someone, hey, can you give me two or three versions of what this deal might look like? And then they come up with their versions of the deals, and then you say, great, I like this piece. How about we do option D? And what's nice about this is it also shows some active listening for you. You countering with something like this or even taking two of the three components, two of those components might be meaningful for you and not for them.