Episode #445: Jay Heinrichs
Meet
Jay Heinrichs
Jay Heinrichs wrote the New York Times bestseller, “Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion,” and How to Argue with a Cat. A persuasion consultant, his clients have included include Southwest Airlines, the Wharton School of Business, Harvard, and NASA. He has another book coming out this year, “Aristotle’s Guide to Self Persuasion.”
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With experience working alongside top organizations like NASA and Harvard, Jay has mastered the art of negotiation, and today he’s sharing his proven strategies and tactics. From understanding the character of your negotiation partner to mastering powerful persuasion techniques, Jay reveals insights that will change how you approach every deal.
Whether you’re negotiating a major contract or handling a challenging buyer, the expert advice in this episode will equip you with the tools you need to close with confidence and finesse.
Outline of This Episode
- (0:00) Introduction to Jay Heinrichs and his background
- (1:03) The difference between negotiation strategy and tactics
- (1:51) Jay’s go-to negotiation strategy for high-stakes deals
- (3:00) Jay shares his top three negotiation tactics
- (5:01) The role of planning in negotiation strategy
- (6:21) Why framing is a powerful persuasion tool
- (8:03) How to counter aggressive negotiation tactics
- (9:50) Jay’s top three negotiation do’s and don’ts
- (13:36) Jay’s successful negotiation with NASA
Understanding Negotiation Strategy vs. Tactics
Jay Heinrichs helps clarify the distinction between negotiation strategy and tactics, two concepts that are often misunderstood or confused. In the world of negotiation, strategy refers to the overarching plan you put in place before the negotiation even begins. This involves setting clear objectives, conducting research, and preparing for various outcomes.
Tactics, on the other hand, are the actions you take during the negotiation process—essentially the moves you make while you’re in the room with your counterpart. Both strategy and tactics work in tandem, with strategy setting the foundation for effective tactics.
Jay emphasizes that many salespeople, while skilled at tactics, often fail to spend enough time on the strategic side of the equation, which can make them less prepared and less effective in negotiations. By balancing both, salespeople are more likely to achieve success in their negotiations.
The Importance of Understanding the “Character” of Your Negotiation Partner
In this section, Jay Heinrichs highlights one of the most powerful yet overlooked aspects of negotiation—understanding the “character” or ethos of the company or person you’re negotiating with. It’s not enough to simply know the numbers or the technical details of a deal; to truly succeed, you must understand the motivations, values, and deeper personality of the other party.
Jay compares this concept to building a relationship, suggesting that salespeople should aim to get their negotiation partner to “fall in love” with them by demonstrating empathy and genuine understanding.
Whether you’re negotiating with a large corporation or an individual, this connection can make the negotiation process smoother and more collaborative. By aligning your approach with the values and goals of the other side, you’re more likely to earn their trust and create a deal that benefits both parties.
Negotiation Tactics That Win Deals
When it comes to tactics, Jay shares some unconventional yet highly effective methods that have consistently helped him in high-stakes negotiations. The first tactic he recommends is to be entertaining.
This may sound counterintuitive in a business setting, but by engaging and even entertaining your counterpart, you create a sense of ease and likability. Jay explains that this approach, known as creating “cognitive ease,” can put the other party in a positive and more receptive state of mind.
The second tactic he shares is about body language—specifically “send love beams.” Although this may seem like a playful idea, Jay emphasizes how body language and non-verbal cues can significantly impact the dynamics of a negotiation. When you make your counterpart feel valued and respected through these subtle cues, it strengthens your position.
Lastly, Jay advises being mindful of the tense you’re using during the negotiation. Shifting to the future tense can help remove any tension in the room and refocus the conversation on long-term outcomes, making it easier to overcome any obstacles or discomforts that arise during the negotiation process.
Negotiating with NASA: A High-Stakes Lesson in Persuasion
Jay was brought in to help a team of aerospace engineers negotiate with the Pentagon to secure two MX missiles needed for a satellite launch. These missiles were crucial for their mission, but getting approval from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency was a complex bureaucratic challenge.
Jay worked with the engineers to shift their approach—moving beyond data and technical arguments to focus on building trust and likability, essential elements in persuasion. Over the course of a year, Jay trained them on negotiation tactics, many of which he discusses in the episode. The engineers, initially focused on hard facts, learned to engage emotionally and relate to their audience.
This shift in approach ultimately led to their success, as they were able to persuade the Pentagon to release the missiles. The engineers, now equipped with these negotiation skills, later applied them in their management roles, continuing to use the principles Jay taught them in their careers.
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What was a pivotal moment in your career that shaped your approach to negotiation, and how did it influence your strategy and tactics?
I was an argumentative kid and a big reader. The combination made me wonder how much power words have. Words get presidents elected, they get people to fall in love, to buy things, agree to things. Words get soldiers to sacrifice their lives. All through my education, though, I didn’t get to study this power in depth. Then one day, while working at Dartmouth College, I stumbled upon a book signed by John Quincy Adams. It was a series of lectures the future president had given at Harvard on the power of words. I read everything he told me to and bothered rhetoricians and linguists around the world for 20 years. Eventually I quit my job—I was then editorial director at a large publishing company—and wrote Thank You for Arguing.
Can you share a specific negotiation tactic that has consistently helped you close deals more effectively? Please provide an example where it worked.
Aristotle wrote that an audience is most persuadable when it’s comfortable and feeling in control. He also said that you want your audience to feel as if you’re one of their tribe—possibly a slightly improved version. Modern behaviorists call this state “cognitive ease.” I call it the Homer Simpson state. When I train people to win business proposals—that crucial stage when they present live—I tell them not to worry too much about using the others’ jargon or any of the other tricks of “decorum,” as we say in rhetoric. Just tell yourself before the meeting that you’re going to love these people. I actually tell clients to try and send love beams out of their eyes. (Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great Roman orator, said that the eyes are windows to the soul.) Some clients think I’ve been eating gummies. But my batting average in competitive RFPs is very high, and I can tell you those love beams work. Clients will send them right back.
What is the most challenging negotiation you’ve ever faced, and what strategy or tactic helped you turn it into a win?
I once helped NASA talk the Pentagon into handing over two mothballed MX missiles. It took a year of training 25 aerospace engineers—literal rocket scientists—to speak English, and to understand that pure logic and data rarely persuade. (Aristotle wrote sadly that it’s due to our “sorry human nature.”) I taught them rhetoric as a set of engineering tools and even drew schematics on the white boards. (My father was an engineer.) That’s how I teach rhetoric in my books—a set of interlocking tools. The rocket scientists picked them up very quickly. They were blown away by the fact that an audience’s perception of you, a set of characteristics I call Caring, Craft, and Cause persuaded more than logic. We won the rockets.
What are your top three must-have tools, frameworks, or resources that sales professionals should use to improve their negotiation skills?
A) When things get touchy, watch the tense. The past tense covers blame and failure: “We already tried that.” The present tense covers values: “That’s not the way we do things here.” The future tense, Aristotle said, is how we made decisions. How are we going to fix this problem? The future pivot can change the whole mood in a room.
B) Learn the art of framing (you’ll find it in my books). The simplest reframing technique is to ask what the issue is really about. Is this about a slide projection doohickey, or a carousel that takes us home again? Framing works especially well in strategic plans and ambitious proposals. I often write about framing in my Substack newsletter.
C) Not to toot my own horn here, but look me up on Substack. Or look up my books. I wrote those books because the ones that existed bored me to seemed too shallow. I make most of my income consulting. So don’t think me greedy!
With buyer behaviors evolving and AI playing a larger role in sales, how do you see negotiation strategies and tactics changing in the future? What should sales professionals do to stay ahead?
As long as humans make the actual decisions, LLMs are a tool. I use AI apps daily. They help me plan my priorities, make me better at Photoshop, even read my writing back to me in my own voice. (Speechify lets you do that.) But if you’re in a highly competitive situation—say, applying for a job—the bots may make the early decisions. In which case, learn the skill of commonplaces. Those are the words that bots are looking for in a particular situation. Study the company’s online presence and pick out the words that occur most often, particularly those words that don’t get used as often in other places. While that can help you navigate around our robot overlords, the technique has been around for a few thousand years.
What’s are some simple but powerful negotiation tactics that most salespeople overlook?
Ha! You want me to reveal my secrets for free? I’ll give you a teaser. Most salespeople know that their character and the relationship are keys to successful negotiations. Persuasion depends on the client liking and trusting you. But here’s what often gets missing. The most important characteristic for “ethos”—that role we play in sales—is what Aristotle called arete (pronounced AH-reh-tay). It’s the audience’s impression of your essential goodness, their belief that you stand for the same values and live up to them. That means being willing to take a loss, or even tell the client they’re asking for the wrong thing. I once told top Walmart executives that their RFP would do more harm than good. It was an awkward meeting. Weeks later, they hired my team. They said they admired my frankness and my willingness to lose business for the sake of doing it right. Arete at its finest.
That leads to another technique I’ll give you as a bonus. We often go too fast in trying to close a deal. The best businesses I’ve won over the years took time to develop. Sure, there are deadlines. But even in a meeting, don’t rush. Tell your story. Know when to get to the “ask,” as fundraisers say. In my book How to Argue with a Cat, I talk about stalking and pouncing. (Cats are the most persuasive creatures on earth, even with a limited vocabulary.) The stalk is just as important as the pounce.
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