Tom Parker

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll, and I am your host. Wow. I hope that you have been well. I feel like I'm a little out of sorts here. I have not done an interview since we talked to Chef Brian Baxter right before Thanksgiving. And it's a little weird taking a month off. I haven't done this yet, so it's good. So the good news is my brain has just been absolutely flooded with so many ideas for 2022, and every day I just, I feel like I'm full of so much gratitude for so many things in my life, and so many people that just make every day amazing.

01:14And this is just such a wonderful time of the year. You know, the holiday season, being with family, being with friends, is just pretty damn special, and I'm really trying to take a moment to stop and smell the roses. Just to kind of feel, be in the moment every single day. I've been doing a lot of planning, a lot of working. I've been working on a lot of projects for some of y'all out there. You know, December and January is a very important time to look back and reflect on your year, and in some cases make some adjustments. So I've been working, I've had the pleasure, really, to work with some amazing restaurants, and through careful strategic negotiations, I'm excited to say we've been able to help some people make some money today and set them up for a very, very profitable tomorrow. And I've been negotiating for restaurants on their behalf with broad line vendors, soda companies.

02:21It's been so amazing because I've had so many conversations over the past few weeks with people that have reached out and said, hey, let's grab a cup of coffee. I'd like to learn more, or you know, I just want to get to know you. Hey, I work a similar position, and I have some questions, or let's just chat. And I've really enjoyed just getting to know so many new people that are in this industry in Nashville. If you're one of those people, you want to connect, you want to just sit down and talk, you want to look for a more profitable 2022, hey, you just want to hang out. My email is Brandon at NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com. I am happy, more than happy to grab coffee with anybody anytime, and it's one of my favorite things that I've been doing over the past few weeks, and I'm going to continue to do through the end of the year and into January. So I thought that today's Wednesday Rewind would be incredibly appropriate to catch up with Tom Parker.

03:21Tom Parker, he's the senior vice president of UConn, Inc., and he is a professional negotiator. And it was one year ago, December the 6th, 2020, that we talked with Tom, and he kind of gave us some tactics and some ways to look at negotiating, and really to understand that there is a, every single time you go into something, you're negotiating. And when we are out there, some people are amazing chefs, and some people are amazing sommeliers, and some people are amazing at their job, but when people come in and try and sell you something, they're trained to negotiate. And sometimes there are tactics they use that are unfair, that are different, that are wrong, and Tom goes through what some of those are, and this is just a really interesting episode that I thought was pretty timely, and I just wanted to share it with you again today. I missed the hell out of all of you. This has been fun just doing this talk up on the intro. One last thing, some companies that I absolutely endorse, and not just because they sponsor the show, but because I've done negotiations and I use these companies because they win hands down every time.

04:33Super Source for your Dish, Machine, and Chemicals. If your Dish, Machine, and Chemical company wants you to sign a five-year contract, don't do it. It's a bad, bad deal. Super Source does not ask you to sign any contracts. He's got specials for you at our website, NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com. Click on the Sponsors tab. Go find Super Source. Jason Ellis is a bad man. He is all over the place, and he wants to come help you. He earns it every single week. What chefs want, they're the company that's doing it all. They really are delivering seven days. They're no minimums. They're splitting almost everything they sell. They are in it to help the independent restaurateur. They're amazing. Cytex is all of your linens. They're a family-owned company, and they are absolutely amazing as well. And then Sharpies Bakery, woman-owned company. They're local. They're delivering baked goods to you every single day. You want to go with no negotiations. You call these people. You tell them that Brandon from Nashville Restaurant Radio sent you, you are going to be hooked up. That is what I guarantee you.

05:34And if you don't like it, you call me, and I'll make it right. How does that sound? So that's what we're looking at right now. Next Wednesday, we will come back with another episode for you on a Wednesday Rewind. We're going to be all new in 2022. We got some cool stuff coming. I missed interviewing people. I'm looking forward to it, but I am enjoying the hell out of a little bit less stress, spending some time with my wife. We're catching up on shows, meeting some new friends, and like I said, it never stops. Just take a moment sometimes. Walk outside if it's cold. Feel the cold on you. Feel whatever it is. If you walk outside and the stars are shining, look at the stars. Look at the leaves blowing around. Just take a moment. Stop and smell the roses. Live in the moment. This is an amazing time of year. Hope that you're able to spend it with the ones you love. We will see you next week. Here's Tom Parker. Today we're speaking with Tom Parker.

06:34Hey Tom. Hey Brandon. Tom is the Senior Vice President of UConn Inc., they're a Richmond, Virginia-based company specializing in customized negotiation training. Tom has over 25 years of sales, marketing, product development, and sales management experience with large multinational corporations. Tom, I'm so excited you're here. Glad to be here. You know, this is one of those times of the year, and I'll give our listeners some context as to why I wanted you to be here. I got to listen to you speak two weeks ago in Nashville, and you talked about negotiations, and it really hit home with me because there are so many people right now that are in the middle of change. They're going through so much, and I just thought that you could bring so much awareness around negotiations and negotiations people need to be having, and just all the nuances around negotiations. So this is really exciting, and I hope that if you're out there listening, you're going to get a ton out of this, like I did a few weeks ago.

07:41I was at a Vistage meeting. Do you do a lot of work with Vistage? Yeah, I'm actually a Vistage Chair, and I've done about 320 Vistage presentations so far, so yeah, I'm pretty deeply involved with Vistage. Can you give our listeners, we have a lot of leaders and business owners here, can you give us just kind of a good elevator speech as to exactly what Vistage is? Sure, it's a peer group advisory board that's run on a local basis, and the concept is really very simple, that most business owners deal with the same sorts of issues over and over and over again, like people, personnel, things like that, and rather than wrestle with those issues on your own, if you get together in a room with a bunch of smart, successful people, you'll typically come up with better ideas, better solutions to the problems you've got, so the organization is about 56 years old, has 750 chapters, I think, or chairs like me in the US, and 23,000 business owners worldwide, so it's a big, well-established organization.

08:55I used to be a member of Vistage just up until last year, when I switched companies and I'm going to get back into it, but next week we're going to have Rod Thurley on the show, and he's a Vistage chair here in Nashville, and I'm so excited to get into that more, so if you don't know about Vistage, that's what Vistage does, and next week we're going to dig into a bunch more of that, maybe have some other special guests, but you, so these Vistage meetings, there's a speaker meeting, and you came in and you were speaking, and what hit home to me is this. Restaurant tours and restaurant owners are in negotiations all the time. What I want to do today is I want to identify when people are in negotiations, I want to identify what type of negotiators people are, the different types of negotiators that people are, and then I also want to talk about some negotiation tactics and styles, because in the restaurant business, at the end of the year, I don't know, like any year, end of your fiscal year, you're going to look back and you're going to see how you did.

09:56There's a report card, and I think 2020 is going to be one that's going to read not like anybody else there wants to read, it's going to be scary, it's going to be messy, it's going to be bloody, and I think a lot of people are going to look in the mirror and they're going to go, we need to do something different this year, and what that means is we're looking at broadliners, we're looking at produce companies, we're looking at dishwasher companies, we're looking at linen companies, meat, poultry, seafood, and we're going to go to those vendors and we're going to say, I want a better deal. How can you help me? And I don't think people realize how loaded that is and how much work goes into those kind of those negotiations. So the main thing that we talked about last week was identifying what type of negotiator you are. Where would you want to start here? Do you want to start off and go into the C1 through C4s? Or do you want to do a general kind of your intro as to about negotiations? There's the setup right there.

10:57You tell me how you want to start. Well, wherever it makes sense, I think the overarching concept that I like to get across is that there are a certain set of skills associated with successful negotiations and there's no one size fits all. There's lots of different scenarios and what works really well in one scenario might be a disaster if applied to a different scenario. So I think there isn't, as we talked about in the workshop, there isn't any one perfect negotiation style and that most people approach negotiations almost as if it's combat, as if it's a confrontational thing with a lot of stress and a lot of emotion involved. And of course, there's reasons for that. I mean, negotiations are important. There's a lot at stake and I get that. But as we talked about in the workshop, a lot of what people are doing at this point is intuitive.

11:57They're not being intentional about the way they approach negotiations or using a gut feel. They're using emotion. They're using past experiences or whatever baggage they bring into the room. And I think if we can do anything today, maybe we can get across the concept that there are various skill sets associated with being a great negotiator and having an awareness of what those skill sets are and practicing those skill sets and being very intentional about the way you approach negotiations and watching what's happening in the midst of the negotiation and adapting to the deal as it unfolds. This is really important. And again, I think it's important that people have a perspective that says, you know, this is in the middle of something here that's going to require me to be unemotional and to be intentional and to really have a strategy and an awareness of what's going on and how I should be behaving right this moment.

12:59So what I'm hearing is that you have to be, I think, initially, you've got to be incredibly prepared that going into a negotiation, relatively going by gut, I think that you allow yourself to bring emotion in really quickly and emotion is emotion like the worst thing you can have in a negotiation? Well, I don't know if it's the worst thing, but it's one of the worst. I mean, we as we say in the workshop, the analogy that is clear as to me about emotion in negotiations is emotion is a lot like given a pistol to a monkey. You don't know what's going to happen, but what are the odds it's going to be good, right? I mean, when people get emotional, what do they lose? You know, perspective, rationality, common sense, kind of important stuff. So being able to recognize emotion as it comes into a negotiation and deal with it is really important because when one or both sides of a deal get emotional, the odds of something bad happen and really skyrocket.

14:03So I think that is a great segue because there's, you know, we use, there's a lot of different personality assessments. You got disc, I love culture index, Myers-Briggs type indicator, those type things. You can tell if you're an emotional person or not. If you make your decisions based upon emotion versus logic, I think that's where a lot, if you're one of those people who makes a lot of decisions based upon emotion, you need to be as prepared as possible to look at facts going into this thing and understand what you want to get out of a negotiation versus what you're willing to give up. Put it on paper, right? Yeah. And you mentioned planning a moment ago. To me, the, if nothing else, the idea that you figure out upfront what your walk away position is on any significant negotiation upfront, at what point, you know, unless scope changes in this, in this deal here, we're talking about at some point, I don't want this deal anymore. That could be on the buy side or the sell side either way. And you need to be real, real calm and cool and collected and think through what is my walk away here?

15:09At what point do I, do I no longer want this piece of business? And you need to write that, that number down, whatever it is, you can't just sort of have it floating around in your head. You have to have a very clear idea of when the deal no longer makes sense, because what happens quite often when people do get emotional or carried away or their competitive juices are rolling is they stay in a deal when they, when they should leave. I mean, it doesn't mean you storm out. It just means you say to the other side, you know what? This one's not going to happen. You know, we gave it a shot, but rather than do something stupid here, we'll come back. We'll do the next one. Because when one or both parties get involved in a bad deal, typically they blow up. Bad deals don't last. People look for a way to weasel out of them. And when that happens, the relationship goes in the tank. So you're way ahead to be able to see at what, you know, when you get to that point and just, you know, say, Hey, look, we gave it a shot. We'll do the next one. So we did an assessment. We can't do the assessment here right now, but I, I'm going to pat myself on the back.

16:11I feel like, I feel like I did really well in the assessment and show you my scores look like, look like this. Uh-huh. But my, my number one was I'm a C1, right? So you've categorized these four quadrants for how people are negotiators, and I may be setting this up terribly. There's four quadrants. There's a test you can take. Is there a way that people out there, do you have a website or is the only way to take this test via having you come and do a workshop? Well, it's a part of the workshops that we do. We do offer some online programs that would, if you go to the uconntraining.com, there are some online ways you can, you can do this as well. But the concept is pretty simple. We look at two variables and that's the, the relationship is, is one variable and the focus on the issues is the other variable. So in other words, in some deals, um, you don't care about the relationship.

17:11If it's a one-time transaction or it's a commodity that you can buy anywhere, you don't care where you buy it. So you don't worry about the relationship and you drive to get the best deal that you can. And that's your C1 quadrant. That's, that's where you ended up. Um, there's other times when the relationship is really important, where the negotiation is with a good customer or whether it's with an important employee or your significant other when you get home, and then you have to come at the, the, the deal a little differently. So there isn't a perfect style. There's four styles and, and there's a time and a place where each one is the, is the appropriate one to use and great negotiators understand that and they, in the, in the course of a negotiation, they'll constantly check in and make sure they're, they're in the right quadrant in order to get the result that they want. So really good negotiators can almost be like a chameleon and judge the room, see where they're at and decide which style that they need. And I'll get, you've, you've identified a word to put each one.

18:12Number one, a C1 is conquer, right? The PI factor is a high focus on issues, low focus on, on people, be a winner at any cost, right? Right. Correct. And lots and lots of people think that's the right way to negotiate. So there's lots and lots of C1 slash conquer negotiators out there. Yes. Those people are typically jerks. Not necessarily, but again, if you, if you just, you know, to, to stereotype a little bit, if you look at procurement people, you know, the purchasing department in any bigger company, you're going to find a lot of C1 conquer type negotiators. That's just how they're trained and how they, how they approach their jobs typically. Yeah. I, I, yeah. So C2 is collaborate, creatively problem solve so both parties can win a high focus on issues, high focus on people. Yeah. The, the idea with, with the C2 folks is they, they want to get a good deal too. They, they add just as much as the C1s. They want to get a good deal, but they also care about the relationship with the person on the other side of the table.

19:16So if you think about that, the only way I can get the deal that I want and maintain or improve our relationship is if, is if we look for the win-win. Yeah. So that's an interesting style. It's a great style to use if there is an important relationship there. I mean, if you think through again, with, with your significant other, with a, with a great customer, with a, with a, with a key supplier, somebody you're going to see over and over and over again and you need, you have to share information or you work on long-term plans or whatever. It's a great style to use. So there are times when it's, it's not a good style. In other words, if, if you go in to do a deal with a C1 who's not interested in their relationship, they just want to, they just want to win. You might, you might not do as well as you, as you might. So the, the skillset is to recognize the style the other party's using and to ask yourself, is there a relationship here I care about or not? And intentionally pick a style rather than do all this with gut feel. That's the, that's the style I think that in a lot of these negotiations that restaurateurs at this time are going to need.

20:21So we'll differentiate here in just a minute. Some of the different people, I'll go over some of the different things. I think that that would be a C3 is concede, right? So that's build friendly relationships, low focus on issues, high focus on people. Yeah. We see this style a lot with salespeople and if you work with salespeople, you know, you've heard them say something like this, you know, boss, I got a new account today. I had to give them this and this and a little bit of that to get our foot in the door, but we're in there now and they love us. We're not going to make money for six years, but in year seven, we're going to kill it. Well, I mean, the point here though is people in this quadrant genuinely believe that the relationship is the key to business, that if they can establish rapport, if they can build those bridges, that good things will happen down the road and you know, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Yeah. And then the C4 is a compromise. So that's split the difference. Low focus on issues, low focus on people.

21:23Yeah. People in the C4 quadrant generally just don't like to negotiate. They'd rather be doing something else and if you think about a compromise is one nice thing about it. It's quick. You give up a little bit. I give up a little bit. We shake hands. We meet in the middle and we're out of here, you know, so again, there are times when that's exactly the right style to use and then there's other times when one of the other styles might be better. So again, the skill set isn't what's my style. The skill set's knowing when to use each of those four in order to get the result that you want. So that's, that's really good and it makes me feel a lot better about being a C1 because I'm above average in the C2 and C3 is my lowest. So I'm a C2 is really good for me too though. So I like that. One of the things that restaurateurs are going to be negotiating with is their main broadline companies and these are people that you're signing a two to three year deal with and a lot of people utilize these companies.

22:24Here's the thing that happens in this industry. This is where people, I don't feel like know that they need to negotiate because what they do is there's, let's just say there's four major players, four major, I don't want to say company names. Let's say there's four major players to sell you all of your products in the restaurant, the broadline food and you use one that you don't trust the one. So you say, I'll buy from the next one and I'll buy from, so now you have, you buy from all four but every week you split off all four of the, they call it spreadsheeting. So I'm going to pit you all against each other on a week to week basis and I'm just going to buy from whoever's cheaper which seems almost like a concede to me. You think that you're being a C1 but you're really conceding because you don't want to have a high emphasis on people and you don't want to have a high focus on the product, on the issue. You just say, I'll just, this will be an easy way to negotiate but what I recommend is you take one of those companies, you negotiate them down to, I buy everything from you.

23:27I put all of my business to you, we're going to negotiate a three-year deal. What are you willing to offer me if I do that? What am I willing to offer you? I'd like what you're saying is I'd like to start a relationship. We don't have a relationship because I buy from four or five people. I'd like to start a relationship. What can we do? There's a little bit of C1 that has to come in there but C2 is your ultimate, what's going to get the deal done? Yeah, it would certainly be a lot less busy work if you consolidated your purchases. The key is to get creative when you sit down with whoever the finalists are and you're trying to put your deal together and look for the win-win. Look for something that's in it for them and that might be the length of the relationship. It might be the breadth of what you buy from them. There's any number of ways you can be creative in putting a deal together but we like to think that you can always go to C1. You can always go to the mattresses and fight it out but the companies are actually providing value.

24:30If it's not a pure commodity, whether it's through product or service, if they do have differentiators and they're providing you with value, our advice is yeah, no, that assumes that they're willing to work with you. Some companies won't. If you pick a partner that is willing to get creative and there's a give and take there, that's ideal. We always recommend looking for that first. If it's not there, it's not there. I think that's leverage. That's part of the negotiation is that you have to know your worth. If I'm a guy that doesn't pay my bills, who pays my bills late every single month and I've got a bad reputation of beating people up over pennies all the time and I go to these companies, you all bid for me, two of those companies may say, I don't want to bid with you because it's not worth my time and energy to deal with somebody who treats their vendors this way. I think that treating your vendors, doing the right thing and treating people really well on the front end allows you leverage when you're dealing with vendors because then people want to work with you.

25:34I think a lot of people in this industry miss that because it's such a crazy industry, so frenetic that we just tend to yell and scream and it's like you start getting a bad name I mean how important is that in a negotiation? Yeah exactly and if you do approach things more collaboratively, if you do work with them and you do get creative, you'll differentiate yourself as a customer and make yourself more desirable and people generally will be willing to work with you maybe a little more closely than they would somebody who's just they think is just going to be there and then gone if a better deal pops up next week or they're just difficult like you say they don't pay their bills or they yell and scream or whatever but I think right now all business but particularly the hospitality area is under so much pressure that that it's I'm sure incredibly stressful every day just just trying to get the bills paid and the figuring out how to operate when the rules change week to week on what you can and can't do.

26:36Man it's almost hour to hour at this point I mean it's watching the news to see what's going to happen I mean it's it's been it's very intense indeed so let's get to the table it's a new year and we want to we want to do it we want to create what we call RFP right a request for proposal we're going to send it out we're just going to hypothetically use this example of broadline that's the biggest controllable expense that a restaurant has is their broadline food or what comes in labor and food is essentially your largest expenses so negotiating that is a big big deal I'd like to walk through just some different tactics and some different things because I loved learning terms like the nibble you know all these different terms that you go through I'd love to learn some of those some like positional negotiating so we bring everybody to the table and I don't I don't know where um where to start here I mean tactics can what should we look for how should we dress what should we do what are some things that help people in negotiations well I think I think first off preparation I mean really for an important negotiation our advice is if you don't plan if you just want to walk in and wing it don't go you don't bother you're going to get creamed and you deserve to get creamed really because all too often people think they know everything they need to know about a negotiation and they're just going to walk in and and get it done and to our way of thinking just spending some time up front thinking through how important is this relationship how are we going to play this good cop bad cop what is my walk away position what are my my fallback positions what could I do what could I put on the table to make the deal better for them you know whether it's payment terms or or the length of the contract or you know whatever it is but really think through and in step one by the way is to look

28:39at the deal from their point of view you know put yourselves in their shoes and say what what are their needs what what what stresses and strains are they going through right now and how does my piece of business fit into that you know well all too often we're just focused on our own situation but the other side has got realities and problems as well and if you take into account the the things they need to get done and the things that they're struggling with quite often it'll give you some insights into into how you might put your proposal together such that you could you know find a way to for for the win win so that's step one is just really think through how you're going to do it what your walk away is what's important to them and how your your your value prop fits into to what they they may or may not need so that's really good stuff because you know as you're saying that i'm thinking about putting together numbers you know and just a perception right so if you come unprepared and you bring these people in and you say hey look let's talk about this and then they say uh well mind what do you what are your sales per year you're like ah we're we're around this number well how much meat do you buy it's close to this how much dairy do you buy it's but if you say we we bought 1.234 million dollars last year we spent 210 000 on center of the play items meat is 210 and then seafood was 197 000 and this was they go oh he came to play like he knows his stuff immediately there's a respect that's given to you from the other side of the table in a negotiation because you come prepared when you don't come prepared they start licking their chops and they go oh this guy has no idea we can we can get whatever we want to like how much percentage points do people lose and and people realize that every time they do something like that they're losing money in a negotiation how important being prepared is for every single dollar you're going to get yeah so again in

30:44alternatives are great you know i would i would never have just one one uh partner in a deal that i that i had to have you know you'd want to be talking to two or three different uh uh in this case suppliers and and you'd want to be able to to to evaluate their proposals against each other play them against each other a little bit you know that's all that's all good and it's perfectly ethical um so you know preparation having alternatives and then the the negotiation itself i mean i don't know at this point how many how much of this is happening face to face versus zoom or versus email or or whatever but the actual context of the negotiation we have to remember there are human beings on both sides of the table and people can get emotional they can have ego problems they can they can you know there's all sorts of things that can be happening that don't necessarily have a direct uh relationship to the numbers on the page i mean they're you know suppose somebody is um working for one of the suppliers and they're they're behind quota you know that's that's an issue that may drive their behavior maybe their jobs in jeopardy that's an issue that may drive their behavior so the more we know about them the better we can put our proposal together and the better we can um maintain a strategy throughout the negotiation now you did mention uh a little while ago tactics and i think the important thing about tactics is just to recognize that that tactics in negotiations are like plays in a football game they're just how you play the game of negotiation and there are classes there are books there are seminars uh specifically designed to teach tactics uh mostly the people on the buying side of the equation but but the reason people use tactics is because they work and and it's really important to understand that that if you're on the buy side of the equation there's a whole portfolio of tactics available

32:49to you that you can use and if you're on the sell side of the equation you have to understand that buyers are going to use those and you need to be prepared with counter tactics but again if you think of negotiations as a game tactics are just how you play the game they're just a part of the skill sets you need in order to be successful so i think a good working knowledge of of of tactics and and counter tactics is really critical because at the end of the day everybody gets to be on both sides of the ball you know sometimes we're the buyer sometimes we're the seller i want to get into these specific tactics because this is this is where my jaw hit the floor in your workshop was i keep thinking about these companies that come into restaurants and they meet with the service manager and they go hey let me talk to you about this program they have a service manager sign a five-year deal which completely you know locks the restaurant into some ridiculous deal and that these companies teach these tactics and they walk into people who have not been taught these tactics and it is it is a it is crazy to think that restaurants allow just anybody to negotiate deals like how important it is to have specific nobody signs this thing unless it is me unless i know everything or whatever this is like restaurant owners identifying who they give control to so let's go over something real fast body language okay we talked about body language in the workshop and then i want to get into the tactics body language what are some things that you need to keep an eye out for in a negotiation we're sitting across table we're sitting in a meeting what do i need to see well um it's a great skill to have reading body language for sure non-verbal cues um because people are sending you information they don't know they're sending you typically non-verbal cues are subconscious and that makes the information particularly valuable and there's a lot of it um in a typical north american one-on-one face-to-face negotiation

34:51over 600 non-verbal cues go back and forth between two people and that's 600 pieces of information about how they're feeling whether they're interested whether they're bored whether they're lying to you you know it's it's kind of important stuff so yes by all means uh good negotiators train themselves to recognize and understand non-verbals or or body language um but the the the piece we always put it up front the caveat up front is you know sometimes a scratch is just a scratch you know people have nervous habits they have medical conditions they have mannerisms and that has nothing to do with with what we're talking about here the the non-verbals that we that we look for are typically instantaneous reactions to things that are happening in the negotiation so that for example if if i ask you uh for a rebate and you say our company doesn't do rebates and i immediately the hand goes to the back of my neck that's a strong negative that's that's a that's that's telling you that i don't like that answer now i might not say anything and you might go on to your next point and your next point and five minutes from now try and close your deal and i'm going to say no and you don't know where you lost me but if you catch the non-verbal you can say well how does that work for you or or how do you feel about that and i'm going to say i don't like it and we'll figure out where to go from there but but the key here again is is to watch for these things in the context of the negotiation another example would be um the we've all heard if somebody's sitting with their with their arms crossed like like this like let me get the camera a little more it's a strong negative right i'm not buying i'm not interested i'm not sold and and it could be yeah but if the room you're sitting in is 62 degrees a lot of people are going to sit like this and it doesn't mean anything so again what would give that gesture meaning is if the person had been sitting with their hands in their lap or whatever

36:55and you ask for the order and you've got the arms crossed immediately at that point then it would it would you would read that as a strong negative is there any is there a better temperature of the room if you're doing if i if they're coming to my place and i'm negotiating and it's really warm are they more inclined to want to get the hell out of there and just do something and leave or it's really cold either way or am i screwing up not being able to recognize non-verbals is there something there well there are large sophisticated companies that have made kind of a science of that sort of thing back in the old days they would smoke cigars in the in the conference room just to make it obnoxious they might put the people facing the sun in the afternoon so the glare is in their face uh one of my favorites is is a particular company i'm thinking of is is in the middle of the country and they would schedule meetings with important vendors on friday afternoons at at four o'clock their time knowing that the the the salespeople there couldn't call their offices on the east coast because they'd be closed on friday afternoon so they would they would have them stranded out there and they would just work them over so there's lots of lots of strategies and tactics and things like that but and sometimes by the way a non-verbal can be a tactic we talked about it in the workshop but i mean i'm sure all of your your listeners have have seen this one it's it's a tactic it's called a flinch it's a fake non-verbal and what it looks like is is this if if i ask you for a proposal and you you give me your proposal and i i go to the back page where your numbers are and i look at the numbers and i look up at you and do this not happy yeah the the non-verbal there is supposed to suggest that i am not only unhappy but i'm in physical pain this this proposal of yours was so ridiculous and so far beyond anything i was expecting that i'm not only shocked and appalled

38:58brandon but i am in physical pain so the the the intent here is to convey to the salesperson that this proposal has actually damaged our relationship and if it works what happens is the salesperson says look look tom it's just a proposal buddy it's we can fix it don't worry about that it's just a proposal and the salesperson will start giving me things and the reality is i haven't said a word i put on this little drama but i haven't said a word so the the countertactic to that one by the way is dead silence if somebody asks you for a proposal and you give them a proposal and you get a big negative reaction out of them the ball's in your court you just wait for them to talk because the reality is they might be surprised they might be disappointed they might be a lot of things but they're not in physical pain so you just wait for them to talk but but i work with thousands of salespeople and i can tell you and i am a reformed salesperson salespeople are not good with pauses they are not good with conversational gaps and they will jump in and start talking when they the best the best policy is to just shut up and wait for the other party to speak guilty definitely been there um and you know you that scenario i think this probably the number one thing that comes up with there is is being in a car dealership you know they they come to you with this number and they go you said i know you said you wanted to pay 300 a month but here here's the number they put it in front of you and it's 825 a month and you're what what is this and you're you're angry and then they go hey wait wait i'm on your team let me go back to the big guy i can probably get it to six and you're like i said three let me see what i can do will you if i can get it to you know and they this what is that tactic well you know it's interesting you bring that up i i've done hundreds and hundreds of workshops in north america and buying a car

41:04and i mean by that always comes up as the most unpleasant negotiation anybody can think of and to me it's the best possible illustration of the power of tactics because if you think about it when you walk into a new car dealership to buy a car you rightfully own 100 of the power 100 of the power because it's your money and you've got lots of choices of where you buy a car and how you buy a car you don't even have to buy a car you've already got a car but car dealers have this highly evolved set of tactics that they use all day long every day and you know we're in there every two or three years and they're very very good at it and and they will use tactic after tactic after tactic to suck the power away from you a few of them just to name names they use one we call time pressure they certainly use higher authority which is i've got to run it by the boss and and any number of other ones but as an example of of a tactic and by the way i i car dealers have a brutally difficult job right now i mean if you think about their their world anybody can go online and find out anything they want to know about the value of the car the invoice pricing and all that kind of thing that their job is very very difficult so i'm not pounding on car dealers i'm just saying the way that the business model has evolved to this point they got to play the game they got to play and it's really good negotiators well yeah and and if you if you think about if you go back to our c1 model there isn't really a relationship there most of the time when we walk into a car dealership so it's kind of up to us to to match that c1 style that they're going to use even though they're going to be friendly and offer you coffee and all that at the end of the day it's a zero-sum game and they're going to play to get the best possible deal for themselves and you're going to play to get the best possible deal for yourself and that doesn't mean it has to be hostile or or anything like that but there isn't a relationship

43:08there that's meaningful uh unless the salesperson is your brother-in-law or something but as an example of of the sort of tactics that that they they'll use um one of them is is time pressure they will keep you there physically as long as they possibly can because they know if you spend three or four hours in their dealership you know drinking bad coffee and waiting for something to happen you're unlikely to go someplace else and start all over again so for example i might say to you brandon we want to make sure we get a a good deal put together today for you so so we need to drive your car you know so we can make you an offer on your trade so i need your keys so now i have brandon's car keys here and i say oh by the way i need a copy of your driver's license too so i've got his driver's license and i leave and i'm gone for half an hour where's brandon gonna go i've got his keys and his driver's license so in the in the trade uh terms he's been unhorsed he can't go anywhere and again i'm gonna keep him there physically as long as i can so and again you know the higher authority gotta run it by the boss i'm working for you brandon but i gotta go fight that fight again they'll stand out back and smoke cigarettes for half an hour while you're sitting there you know what's going on and see so that's that's where i'm sitting here going you know what so many people walk into this place and this is it goes back to the beginning of our conversation with the most important thing is to be prepared to understand that when you're walking in that negotiation begins you walk in that door and what you know about car what you need and what you want about their tactics that time pressure you can there's ways you can counter that stuff my favorites here and we'll i want to go over some of these tactics now the nibble all right so nibbles the top of the list um at the end of the negotiation right so this is something else i do this a lot when i get car when you do this is a tactic i use when i buy a car the nibble is my favorite because i use the higher authority and the the time pressure against them with my nibbles yeah yeah the the the concept behind this tactic

45:15the nibble is is the seller or the buyer understands how badly the seller wants a deal and and again you can use it on both sides of the deal you can use it as a buyer or the seller but the idea is both sides understand that one party is really going to be motivated to do the deal and they use the leverage at the very end of the deal to ring additional concessions out of the other party so in the car dealership example maybe you ask for formats or maybe you ask for an extended warranty or maybe you ask for you know detail once a month detail once a month free oil changes whatever it is and and our advice is always be prepared on your side of the deal have your nibbles figured out in advance and if somebody says if they agree to the first one you just move to the second one if you get that one keep on going because again the the power of that tactic comes from the leverage that that that one side or the other has uh because they're the the the other side of the table is more motivated to do the deal now the car dealership example they're very motivated to sell you the car and you should be playing nice and cool on your side of the table yeah maybe i'll buy a car today maybe i won't you know maybe i'll buy it someplace else all right i was at the very very end you've got the whole thing down and you go you know what i really like these all-weather floor mats if i you know what i think we could probably do something here if i get those you're what you told a story about furniture shopping with your wife right yeah yeah um where she said tom you're the you're the big negotiator here well what can you do will you tell that story uh okay but let me just give it a little context the reason i tell that story is because i encourage everybody in my workshops to practice the skill sets that we talk about over the course of of the presentation so there are there are skill sets with regard to tactics and reading non-verbals and all that and i encourage people to use them in their personal

47:16lives because typically the stakes are smaller and you have a higher volume of transactions and in our personal life we get to wear both hats right sometimes you're the buyer sometimes you're the seller so that's the the setup for the story and as an example of how you can use these tactics in your in your personal life um the example was uh my wife and i um went to lunch one day and we're driving home from lunch and out of the blue she tells me that she wants to stop in a little hearth and patio store and buy an umbrella for our deck now i'm a guy that's that's to me it sounded like the most boring horrible experience in the world but i've just celebrated my 48th year of wedded bliss and i'm a c3 conceder around the house so we're in the hearth and patio store and my wife is looking at these umbrellas and honest to god they all look the same to me they it was just the boredom was intense so i did what we all do i wandered off and i wandered over to the other side of the store and over there there was a little set of patio furniture and it had a sign on it a great big sign said uh clearance 50 off and at the bottom of the sign there was a little a separate sign that said today only take an extra 100 off so i'm standing there looking at it and my wife turned around to ask me a question of course i was gone and she blew up it came storming across the store and said why in the world can't you just stand there when i turned around asked me a question and i said you know we just moved into our empty nester house and everything is nice and new except our patio furniture is cutting cold and i said this is good looking stuff what what what do you think so so she looked at it for a minute and said uh okay let's uh let's see what you can do and i said well well what do you mean see what i can do she said well let's see what kind of deal

49:17you can get us i said deal it's it's 50 off and today 100 bucks off and she said uh anybody can get that deal aren't you mr hotshot negotiator guy isn't that your thing and i said yeah okay yeah sure so about then the salesperson came over and he said well folks what do you think and i said you know i i like this furniture here i really hope we can put a deal together i said but there's a little bit of a problem and the guy said well what's the problem i said well we came in to buy that umbrella over there i said if you could if you could throw that umbrella into the deal and he said sir i couldn't possibly do that as you can see this merchandise is heavily discounted and our umbrellas are value priced and blah blah blah and i said okay well how about this how about if i buy the furniture and the umbrella and you throw in that 60 stand you know the cast iron thing you put the umbrella in so it doesn't blow away he said yeah i i guess i could do that i said i'm gonna need a cover for the winter so birds you know don't poop on mine buy a new furniture he said sir i couldn't throw in a cover i've already done more than i should have i said i get it i get it well how about this i said sell me to cover at half price because you know that's what you paid for it and that way i get a good deal and it doesn't cost you anything he said i don't i don't know i said look i don't want to be rude but my wife has an appointment to get her legs waxed in 10 minutes i said if we can't put this thing he said or i'll throw i'll i'll i'll sell you the covered half price so you've got uh you got some nibbles there a little time pressure i like it and then i said well you are going to deliver this right and he said uh yeah i guess so i said well we have some people coming over tomorrow night about five could you have it in our house by maybe maybe two he said all right and i said there is just one other small just this this small thing he said what's that i said well

51:20i'm not good with tools i said your guys are going to set this stuff up right he said fine so we did the deal we're walking out to the car i looked over at my wife and i said well and she went yeah so so i always tell people you're not necessarily going to impress your significant other i would never go that far but have fun with negotiations it's a game and just like any game you're going to play the more you practice the more things become second nature the less stressful they become and the thing about negotiations is you really don't have any choice you're going to negotiate whether you want to or not tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day for for the rest of your productive life so i think if you if you take the time and make the effort to to understand the the the the parameters the rules the the skill sets involved in effective negotiations there'll be a lot less stressful and the the cumulative impact of of being a better negotiator is huge i mean if you could just do a little better for most of the deals you're going to do for the next 20 30 40 years then you know the payoff is pretty big so it is worth investing some time and energy and in just the the the nuts and bolts of of how to be a good negotiator today even talking to you today i feel like i've learned uh so much i just the awareness around negotiating i think was the thing that really hit me was that hey i think i'm out there doing the right thing i think i'm doing this but then when i realized how many tactics and how many things people who are selling me stuff and are negotiating with me before i even know what happened and go oh my gosh how did i lose that how did i lose that and just being aware of some of these things and being able to have you know have a plan when i'm going in to make purchases or when i'm about to sign a big deal if i'm buying a car whatever the thing might be i think right now a lot of us as leaders are leading through change you know ever like we said earlier change happens every hour on the hour

53:21you have to lead typically a team of people through that change and that in itself is a negotiation as we as we as we lead so i mean just being aware of all of these things it's been amazing tom you're taking the time today to join us on nashville restaurant business radio this is my first episode of nashville business radio you know i'm i'm segregating out one of my shows every week to kind of focus on some of the details of the industry and um i don't know how to say thank you enough for taking the time today but one thing that i do with every guest is i like to and i leave the show i like to end the show you get to take us out with a thought you kind of just did an amazing job there a second ago if you were to be speaking to the nashville community take us out what do you got anything you want to say whatsoever well i hope everybody has a wonderful holiday season number one and number two i hope we can put 2020 in the rear view mirror and get get you know off to a fresh start at the beginning of the year and just like everybody else in america i really pull in for the for the restaurant group because the stresses and strains you guys have been under have been phenomenal and i do everything i can to support my local i can to support my local restaurants and i hope that the rest of america is doing the same thing because we need you guys we want you guys to be there and and anything i can do to to help at my end uh brandon you know please let me know tom how can if i have people listening to this that would like to have you come do a workshop how do people get a hold of you give us some contact information yeah uh the best way to get a hold of me is uh email and it's tom dot parker at uconntraining.com pretty straightforward uconn y-u-k-o-n just like the scrolling across the bottom of your screen there so tom dot parker at uconntraining.com wonderful tom parker thank you have a wonderful holiday season thank you so much for joining us and uh we will talk to you soon my pleasure my pleasure guys have a happy holiday thanks tom all right tom parker from one

55:25year ago december the 6th 2020 hope you guys enjoyed that and again if you want to talk about any of this stuff i'm not this isn't a necessarily a business solicitation i'd like to meet you i want to know people out there if this kind of stuff interests you and you're like damn i want to learn more uh let me know send me an email brandon at nashvillerestaurantradio.com uh let's talk about let's engage i would love to uh tell you whatever you want to know so let's chat hope you guys out there being safe uh hopefully you are vaccinated hopefully you've got your booster hopefully you've got your children vaccinated i love you guys bye