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Over my career, acquiring and scaling businesses for Acquisition.com, I've done a lot of deals.

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I want to put the five most brutally effective tactics that I know in one video for you.

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A lot of these things I didn't actually learn from books. I learned them from mentors and actually

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seeing them do it and learning in the streets in the real world. Most itty bitty tactics don't

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actually drive the needle, but these five actually have gotten deals done and improve my situation

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or standing in the deal. So let's dive in. There's three contexts that you're going to use each of

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these skills with. The first is with employees and this goes both ways. If you're an employee

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trying to negotiate with an employer, then that applies. The second is going to be vendors.

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Now this also applies if you're a vendor who's dealing with customers. And then third,

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you've got what I would consider partners. This is when you do deals, M&A, things like that

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investment. So these are kind of the three big vectors that all of this stuff applies to. So if

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you're like, I'm not sure if this will work for me. You for sure, even if you don't have a business,

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you are an employee. And if you are an employee, you don't want to use that. You certainly have

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vendors that come to your house and do things for you like, this is the fruit of life. You have to

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negotiate and you get what you negotiate, not what you deserve. That may sound not fair, but it's

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also the truth. Number one, this is actually from a Harvard Business School thing that I learned

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from Shiran Sarvata. It's called Batman. Now I didn't know the fancy term for it, but it means

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best alternative to a negotiated agreement. So what does this really mean? Research has shown

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that having strong battena, basically a strong alternative gives you significant leverage in

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negotiations. Negotiations all about leverage. London Business School did a study and they found

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that negotiators who know their alternatives set higher aspirations so they ask for more. They

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make more aggressive first offers and they negotiate ultimately better outcomes. So your battena

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serves as almost like an anchor, a counter anchor that you have in the back of your mind

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of what you're negotiating with. It's kind of like a source of power. It's a decision standard

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that you only accept deals that are better than your best alternative. You can think about this

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in any setting. So if you're with a girl and you know that you can only date tens, if a seven comes

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along, you're like, well, my alternative is a 10. So I'm only dealing with tens. If someone says,

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hey, I'll be willing to buy all of your inventory for 10 bucks a piece and somebody else comes along

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and says, I'll do it for nine. Instead of just saying, no, you're like, I'll do it for 1050 or

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I'll do it for 11. You can edge them up. But if you know that it's not going to matter, then it

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doesn't matter. So I'll tell you something that recently happened. I'm right now negotiating to buy

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a home. It's something that Layla wants and it's aggressive. We already have a home that we like a

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lot. I really like the house we have. My best alternative to buying this house is doing nothing

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and just enjoying the home that I already have. They're in a terrible position because right now,

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I know that they haven't had anyone else who's bid on the property because it's aggressively priced

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off the putt that way. It's them versus me and it's who wants it less. The reason bad is so important

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because you're like, okay, I get that. How do I have a best alternative to a negotiated agreement?

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You win negotiations and I'm starting with this one because I think it's all five of this or

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six or ones that I'm going to show you are going to be so important. But this one is probably the

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greatest source of psychological power. And you do this before you sit down to the table.

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Me going to look at these homes, I know I don't have to buy the homes. When I was selling

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gym lunch and prestige labs, I was like, I can just keep the businesses and they'll just keep

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making me money. I don't need to sell them. And from negotiating for that position, you only want

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to sell when you don't want to sell. You want to buy when you don't want to buy because you have

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something else. If you're looking for jobs as an employee, you want to negotiate when you already

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have another offer. So if you're going to your existing employer, get another offer and then

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negotiate with that. You can only do that so many times before you start losing good wealth.

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So you have to make sure that you're balancing that well. If you're dealing with a vendor,

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then you're like, okay, I'm going to get multiple bids before I'm going to decide to work with you

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because these are what I'm considering. You'll get so educated from actually negotiating four,

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five, six of these vendor agreements that you'll learn other terms that other people include

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that you can use, which is a later strategy that I'll explain. Getting multiple offers before

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you sit down increases your bet. So for sure, don't take the first offer because even if you have

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first offer within the negotiation with one guy, but then you have that offer compared to all the

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other offers that you're ultimately going to get to do the work. On the vendor side, it's reverse.

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What's my best alternative? What are my other customers? If I've got 20 other customers,

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I got people banging on the door. It's a supply-demand thing. So I've got more demand for my services

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than I have supply. And so if you don't want it, don't worry. I've got another customer behind you.

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And so this is the leverage that we go back and forth in negotiations. And then finally,

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with partnerships, the same idea, how can I get multiple offers from people wanting to buy my

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business? And at the same degree for me, if I'm trying to buy a business, then I want to not have

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to buy the business because I've got other businesses I'm looking at. So no matter what, all of this

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is one before you sit down to the table. Right now, if you sit down and you need this deal and you

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have no other offers, all the little taxes that you can try, sure, you can try to do it, but the

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thing is that it's just trying to win at poker only on bluffing. It's a bad position to be in.

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I would rather have pocket aces. If you have other offers, there's two different ways of thinking about

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this. So one is you can be overt about it and say, listen, this is the counter offer. If you can

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beat the offer, beat it. If you can't, no worries. We don't need a waste time. The other

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way is that you just have it in the back of your mind, and then you just see what you can get

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because the thing is somebody else is giving you a $10 offer. If you say, hey, I've got a $10 offer,

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maybe this person will just beat it by $10.25. But if you have the confidence that you know you're

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going to sell the inventory no matter what for a profit, shoot for $11. Shoot for $12. Shoot for $15.

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You can shoot way higher because you know your plan B is not bad. So when you show it,

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they're just going to buy basically marginally edge it versus you having the confidence to basically

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swing big. We're quick. If you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like,

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And so we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you

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put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important bar for you,

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And if you want us to actually help you de-contrain the business and you're trying to scale,

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we'd love to help you out on the thank you page. You can just book a call with my team and we will

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look into business, see if we can help. And if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this

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in person live. So that's cool. Hit the link. Otherwise, enjoy the rest of the video.

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Now the second is a big one. And a lot of negotiation books and courses and stuff talk about this.

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And people are like, hey, I'm not trying to anchor here. It doesn't matter if you say I'm not trying

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to anchor here. It's an anchor. And anchor is the first number that is set in a negotiation.

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If you're like, hey, what do you think you'd be willing to do this for? And someone's like,

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ah, I was thinking I could maybe do it for $2,000. That's now the anchor. You want to get

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less than that. And you were like, shoot, I was hoping for 500. Well, something you should have said

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500 first, because now they're 2000s is ridiculous. There is a strategy called counter anchoring,

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but it's typically not as effective as anchoring, but it's the only move you have left. Now,

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the flip side is the reason a lot of people don't want to put the anchor out is because they don't

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want a short change. If someone was going to say yes to 5,000, you put 2000 out there, you're like,

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damn, because whatever happens, if someone gives you a fast yes, you're like, no, I left so much

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money on the table. So I'll give you a little pro tip that I've learned being on the other side of

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this. If I have somebody who comes to me and says, hey, I'll do it for $2,000. And I would have paid

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five. And I say, yeah, $2,000 works. The next thing I do is I say, hey, and if you were curious

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of whether I would do it for 2500, I wouldn't have done. And the thing is that it puts them at ease

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that like, you know what, you wouldn't have done more. And what happened is I bought a super expensive

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penthouse a few years ago. And after I bought it, the guy who sold it to me, obviously a wealthy guy too,

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he said, hey, we accepted your first offer and you're probably wondering if we would have done

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it for us. He said, I wouldn't have sold it for penniless. It felt so classy. Maybe he would have

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sold it for penniless. I have no idea. But in the moment, actually, like, I was like, oh, okay,

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it just made me feel a lot better. So if you're in the reverse situation, I would put someone at ease

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by just saying, hey, I wouldn't have done it for penniless. I wouldn't have done it for anymore,

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whatever. What's interesting is that Daniel Nobel Prize winner figured out that people give

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excessive weight to the initial information and make insufficient adjustments from that starting

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point. It's a psychological bias. Basically, it's like, you want to anchor as high as possible. That's

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why I'm a big advocate of getting the gas. You put the big number out there because it completely shifts

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the whole negotiation numbers to way, way higher. And the things people think in different increments.

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And that's what we want to change. If you say, I'll do this work for $100,000, whatever you're in

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construction. If someone was thinking 10, their increments now become the entirety of what they

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were willing to pay. They're going to be like, can you do it for 80? All of a sudden, we're thinking

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in $20,000 increments as a side note, you can also anchor increments. So explain what that means.

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I'll actually walk you through the house negotiation that I'm actively in right now.

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The house was listed at 25 million. Then they dropped it to 20 million because the markets changed

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just things like that. Okay. So now they're at 20 million. So I made an offer for 15 million.

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They countered and said, we'll do it for 16.9. So big move on their part, right? They're moving

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aggressively. They're trying to sell the house. They moved a lot towards me because they're trying to

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get a deal done. The natural thing that some people might think is, okay, they're at 17, you're at 15,

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counter with 16 here. So what I did is I counter with a 15.25. So they moved 3 million. I moved up

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250 grand. Things that there's this idea of like movement of you make an offer. I make an offer.

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So if I say 15.25, what am I indicating? I'm not willing to move very much. I'm going to

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out of reciprocity, which we'll cover later. I'm willing to move a little bit. I'm going to make

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some counter offer, but I'm not going to give a lot. Then I can stack in other terms that make it

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more ameliorable for them. My initial offer, I had two other things that I was like, okay, I'm

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going to offer cash. My first offer is not going to be cash. I can also say, hey, it has furnishings

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in the house, which are super expensive. I don't want to have to deal with refurnishing the house.

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What I did was when I moved up to 15.25, I Sweden the deal by making it at all cash,

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but then I also said I also want the four million dollars of furniture that's in the house.

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Real quick guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast.

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will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com

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forward slash road map, R-O-A-D map, road map. Which is technically a worst second offer,

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than my first offer. But the thing is that I move the number up and a lot of people are always

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way too fixated on the price and not enough on the terms. One is we anchor with our original price

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and also in the increments that we move in. This was something that took me actually a while to

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figure out. And so let me tell you a story about this one. So one of my partners at my gym,

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way back in the day, I learned this from him. He had to get this big custom front desk built.

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So it had like multiple cutouts, we have multiple salespeople, big, impressive thing,

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you get a custom built. The guy came out, they built this whole thing. He was like, hey,

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when we went to do like the final inspection, we noticed that they had kind of like knicked a corner

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of it just from moving it around or whatever happened, right? It was a small nick, but it was

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noticeable. My partner goes to the guy and he says, hey, how much would it cost you to replace this?

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And the guy, of course, because he doesn't want to rebuild the whole thing. He's, oh my god,

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it would be a huge deal for us to have to, like just this little thing, we have to go back to the

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job, we have to do those stuff. It would probably cost us $1,500 just to replace that. And he says,

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that sounds like a pretty good place to start it for a discount.

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Nasty. I was like, oh, I'm going to use that. If there's ever someone who messes something up,

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instead of saying, hey, what can you knock off the price, ask them what the big inconvenience

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would be for them, a scriber price to it. And then they have a hard time backing down from that,

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because they just said that's how much it would cost them to fix it. Then you should probably

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discount us by that much, because that was the size of the mess up. So you get them bidding for

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themselves and then you flip it. So number three, I learned this from a different mentor. They called

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misos, but basically multiple equivalent simultaneous offers. So what does that mean? That means that I

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present offer a offer B and offer C or just offer A and B. It doesn't really matter. You're going

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to have two offers, you're going to have three offers. And each of these have different prices in

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terms associated with them. And so what happens is when you make multiple equivalent offers,

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it's like embedding reciprocity. It's like, hey, I'm trying to be reasonable. I just want to

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figure out what works best for you, because all three of these work for me, but which one's better.

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This is a way of actually teasing out what someone else's priorities are if they're not willing to

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tell you, because a lot of times you want to hold your card close and not say, what are the things

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that are most valuable to you? Now, over time, you put some trust, you put some rapport, and you will

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be able to share, because ideally, something that's important to you is not important to them. And

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they give you this one and something that's important to them. It's not important to you. You give

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them. And that's fundamentally a good negotiation. And one of the big things that I misunderstood

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in the beginnings that I assumed negotiation was zero-sum game. And it's never a zero-sum game,

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because you're a different person you have different needs. You're always going to have some

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things that will be more important to you than other people. And in that situation, it's like,

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you want to just interlock the things that matter most to each person. That's where it becomes a

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positive sum game. Both parties are better off from basically giving and taking in places that are

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less meaningful to them, and more meaningful to the other person. The Journal of Personality and

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Social Ecology showed that presenting multiple equivalent offers simultaneously increases the

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likelihood of finding mutually beneficial solutions. This approach demonstrates flexibility while

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also maintaining your core interest, because you're the one who's presenting all the offers. It's

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almost like a reverse assumed close. Hey, I'll do any of these three things, and you just pick the

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one that works for you. And then the thing is, they're picking all any of these I said already

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worked for me. Let me give you a real word example. So let's say option A is lower monthly fee

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with a longer commitment. Option B is a higher monthly fee, but has premium support. And then

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option C is kind of like a pay as you go with slightly higher rates, but maximum flexibility.

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All three options for giving you similar overall value, but you might look at them and be like,

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I just want to know which one meets your needs better. From their answers, you'll be able to understand

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their motivations. Now, let me tell you some knowledge from the street. If someone gives you multiple

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offers, if you're on the other side of the table, what I like to do is say, I like the best part of

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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

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make an offer? That is the best of all three. And I learned this from my friend Sharon.

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Guys, done more deals than anyone I know. I was like, ooh, that's good. So the flip side is you

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can ask someone, hey, can you give me two or three versions what this deal might look like? And

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then they come up with their versions of the deals. And then you say, great, I like this piece.

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How do we do option D? And what's nice about this is it also shows some active listening for you.

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You countering with something like this, or even taking two of the three components,

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two of those components might be meaningful for you and not for them. Again, because they

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put them in the different deals. You might find out that you can get more of the things that you

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want just by asking. So, number four, reciprocity. Now, reciprocity is key in all sorts of persuasion.

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And I'll say this one caveat that I believe, reciprocity only matters in cultures where reciprocity

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matters. There are cultures where reciprocity is not nearly as important. This is where sometimes

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when cultures mix, people take advantage of systems because that's not as important in the culture

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they came from. And so, the culture where the person is giving first in order, because they

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expect something back, the other culture will just take advantage. And be like, look at the

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city of it. He just gave me some free stuff. And so, you will have to make sure that basically

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you're within a culture or society that reciprocity is the norm. But if it is the norm,

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there's huge amounts of things that you can use for persuasion perspective. So, the beauty

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with how we structure reciprocity is that people are more sensitive to the fact that they gave

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something and you give something. What's more difficult is ascribing the relative value.

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So, let me give you an extreme example. Let's say that I take someone's order from the

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counter and I bring it to the table where we're both eating lunch. Right? The person might say,

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thank you for doing that. If I then said, hey, can you pick me up and drop me off from the

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airport tomorrow? I mean, I did get you your lunch yesterday. The thing is that it poses,

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it looks like it smells like reciprocity, but the value of those two concessions are wildly

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different. And so, the idea is that we're trying to trade concessions in a way that is still

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advantageous to us. What I like to do in terms of my thinking, like the example that I gave in terms

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of multiple simultaneous offers, which is why I think this works well post that, is that I try and

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break each of my things and do as many different pieces as possible so I can trade more times.

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So, like this house example that I gave you earlier, if I have 15 million, but this thing is going

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to be financed, can I go cash or financed? I can do closing period. I could say it's a 90 day

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closer, 30 day close. That's going to be significantly more valuable. I could say furniture versus not.

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There's other terms that we can basically weave into the deal that I'm not going to play all those

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cards at once. Now, this one is a real estate subtract system, much more straightforward. But a

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transaction like this, it's like you want to think, what are all the variables? We want to use

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all the value equation variables. Speed, how can I deliver this faster? How can I do it slower?

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We've got the actual price, obviously. On top of that, we have the risk associated. So,

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who's going to be taking on more risk in this situation? And what are the different types of

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risk that someone's taking on? Then we have ease. How can we make this easier or harder for the

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other person? For each of these components, you want to take whatever you're offering, whether

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it's an employee or whether it's a vendor or whether it's a deal. I want to look through each

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of these lenses and think, how can I have more variables at my disposal so that when it comes

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at the horse trading, I can make a small concession in ease and they only have two variables and

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I've got five. And when I have five, I can give without changing my price and say, hey, I'll do

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15 with ease. They'll come down from 17 to 16. And I say, cool, I'll do 15 with ease and risk.

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And then they come down from 16 to 15.5. And I say, cool, I'll do 15 with ease, risk and speed.

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And so when we do it like that, then all of a sudden, it's like, I'm still keeping the

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reciprocity, but I just have more arrows in my quiver. When you're sitting down to the table,

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you want to think through all of these different variables that you have at your disposal.

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For me, I have this big deal sheet that has 80 different things that I can change about a deal

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so that when I go into the conversation, I have so many things that I can move flexibly to make

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my offers more compelling without the unstated assumptions that people all have because things,

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they're assuming the deal just has these two things and everything else is the way they want.

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And for you, you have 80 other variables that you're like, oh, I can change this one, I can change

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this one, I can change this one. And that allows you to stay in reciprocity with the other person.

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That ultimately gets you a better deal long term. So as we're thinking through this, it's like,

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if we sit down on the table and we have one or multiple other offers that we think are really

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compelling and interesting. And we use that as our psychological power so we can anchor super high

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and we anchor low in terms of our counters, right? Anchor high in terms of our initial anchor low

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in terms of our counter offers. And then we have multiple simultaneous offers that are either

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presented to us or that we can present to somebody else using more variables and then horse trade

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with reciprocity so we can stay in the pocket but still more or less stayed the same initial offer,

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then we're probably going to increase the likelihood that we get a good deal done.

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Number five is framing. I would say this is most important, especially for employees and

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vendors, less so for partnership type or like M&A type stuff, but it can probably also be

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important here too, but I'll just give more use cases in these two right now. So if we're talking

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about framing, then how we position something is going to matter a lot. So if I'm an employee

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selling to an employee here, which is fun, I'm not sure what we're doing, I would probably say

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something to the extent of we want to make investments in these places and I see me coming in as

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an investment not a cost. And ideally if we frame this as how am I going to get a return on this

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investment, then I'm no longer a cost center in the business at all because I'm just a percentage

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commission essentially on what I'm bringing the business. If I'm a vendor at the same degree,

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I'm going to try and frame something as an investment, I'm going to frame it based on return,

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not based on overhead. On the flip side, you always want to reframe the other way, which is you

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want to reframe this as cost, you want to reframe this as overhead so that ultimately you have more

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basically negotiating power because you're pushing them down, they're aching themselves up. A lot of

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times people don't even understand framing and so they'll just accept the frame that you present.

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So rather than saying, hey, this can cost you 5 grand, we just say like for $5,000 investment,

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you can see $15,000 in maintenance cost savings. That's very different than this is going to cost

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5 grand. If that's the reality, then it's going to be far more compelling and far more likely

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person is going to accept your offer, even though functionally it's the exact same thing.

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I was talking to you a few home services businesses that do kind of construction stuff. And so I

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talked to a pool guy, talked to a patio guy, talked to an awnings guy who did like awnings on top of

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vatios. And I said, do you have any data that shows resale value of homes that have awnings versus

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not? Or do you have any data on the resale value of the specific neighborhoods that you're going to

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go into of pool versus not pool? If someone knows they spend $100,000 on a pool and they add $100,000

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on their house, I'm like, then the pool's free except you get to enjoy the pool the whole time.

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So this, we shouldn't even be talking about that because you're really just taking it from one

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pocket and putting it to another. You're the one who gets to keep the pool. I don't keep the pool.

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It's all for you. So the idea is how we frame it. If you're going into these things to cost

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you 100 grand, that's a very different frame than your house is currently worth a million.

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The other houses that are selling at 1.2 all of pools, it's going to cost you 100 grand for the pool,

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but you're going to have $200,000 in home value. What are we talking about? It's a very different

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conversation. So tactically, when you're in one of these situations, we want to have the data

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to support our argument for whatever our framing is. And typically it's going to be some sort of

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return, especially if it's a monetary thing, right? We want to frame it in terms of what the image.

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And so the strongest visitors and to say, look at the other 10 houses that sold in this neighborhood.

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Look at however many deals that have been done. They all have these components. The ones that didn't

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suffer this sort of loss. And you know what? Maybe it's not a one to one ratio. It costs you 100 grand

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and the houses of the pools, it's an extra $50,000. Okay, let's not frame it as 100. We can frame it

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as half off. But you also get to enjoy the pool for that whole time. And so if you think you're

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going to sell this in however many years, do you want to enjoy it and barely pay much

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at all over that period of time? Probably rock and roll. If you like this video,

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you're going to love the 13 years of brutal business lessons that I have learned over my