Turning Emphatic No into Yes: A Lesson from Pumpkin Negotiation in France (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Negotiators all over the world fail to reach agreements or reach suboptimal agreements because they don't know what to do when they come up against an emphatic no. I learned to turn an emphatic no into a yes by understanding my own interest and understanding the other party's interest when I was negotiating for pumpkins in France. Now interest is a term we use in negotiation and it means the motives, the concerns that are underlying that emphatic no. So let me tell you about negotiating for pumpkins in France. My husband and I were on sabbatical and we were writing and we had our daughters in the local school. The teacher there saw a couple of American parents as an opportunity to have a Halloween party for the French children. He wanted them to carve pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns for their party and my job was to find the pumpkins and I looked everywhere for the pumpkins. I could find these things called courges. They were about this big around. They weighed a ton and you need a machete to get into them. In negotiation terms these courges were my batna, my best alternative to a negotiated agreement. The courges was my fallback but it was actually terrible so I kept looking. Finally I found a farm stand that had pumpkins. A woman, Madame Petit, came out of the back. I told her I was interested in pumpkins. She gave me the price and I quickly accepted the price because my batna, those courges, was terrible. And then she asked me how many pumpkins I wanted and I had 32 children. I quickly counted. She had slightly more than 32 pumpkins but a lot of them were little. So I told her I wanted all of them and as soon as I did that she's turned and starts walking away going no no no. So I had to think really quickly about what my strategic options were to try to turn that emphatic no into a yes. One option was to offer her more money but I didn't really think money was the interest underlying her no because she had given me a price and I had already accepted it. Another option would have been to ask her how many pumpkins she'd sell me but I wanted a pumpkin for each child so I thought that option wasn't going to generate a solution that was going to meet my interests. I also thought of explaining to her what my interests were that I wanted to do the Halloween party for the Vanosk children but I also didn't think that was going to get to her interests, just mine. So my last option was to ask her why not? Why won't you sell me all your pumpkins? But then I thought lots of times negotiators don't like to reveal their interests. They're afraid that doing so makes them vulnerable to your exploitation. So I needed a fallback if she wouldn't answer my direct question. I knew I could make her an offer and then maybe if she said no we could engage in some conversation to understand what was behind that no. A third option is to ask her well under what circumstances would you sell me all your pumpkins? So ask her to make me an offer. I decided to start with the first question and ask her directly why. She explained if she sold me all her pumpkins she wouldn't have any seeds to plant the next year. I in turn explained my interest to have pumpkins for the Vanosk children to turn into jack-o'-lanterns and I offered to bring all her seeds back November 1st if she would sell me all her pumpkins. She agreed. Negotiators often think that the only way to win a negotiation is for the other party to lose. But if you understand your own interests and you learn about the interests of the other party you can often reach an agreement in which both parties win. Madame Petit and I did. She got her seeds and I got all the pumpkins.