Start With No

170
By Jim Camp
Reviewed by Tex Morgan

About the Author

Jim Camp has coached people through thousands of negotiations at more than
150 companies, including Motorola, Texas Instruments, Merrill Lynch, IBM,
and Prudential Insurance, as well as many other smaller companies in a wide
range of industries. He has lectured at graduate business schools in the United
States and has been a featured speaker at Inc. magazine’s “Growing the
Company” conferences. Jim founded the Camp Negotiation Institute in 2010.

About the Book

Win-win plays to your emotions. It takes advantage of your instinct and desire to make the deal. Start
with No teaches you how to understand and control these emotions. It teaches you how to ignore the
siren call of the final result, which you can't really control, and how to focus instead on the activities and
behavior that you can and must control in order to negotiate with the pros.

Start with No introduces a system of decision-based negotiation. Never again will you be out there on a
wing and a prayer. Never again will you feel out of control. Never again will you compromise
unnecessarily. Never again will you lose a negotiation.

The Book’s ONE THING

You must make clear that you do not take “no” as a personal rejection, but as
an honest decision that can be discussed and perhaps reversed.

BLUE SKY LEADERSHIP CONSULTING | 210-219-9934 | PETER@BLUESKYLEADERSHIP.COM

Blue Sky Leadership Consulting works with organizations to leverage Strategic Thinking and Execution Planning and we encompass many
of the principles in these books into our Four DecisionsTM methodology and development of your company’s Growth Roadmap™. Need
to grow top line revenue? Improve bottom-line profits? Build accountable and trusting teams? Improve cash flow? Develop leadership
team members? Contact us for a free consultation

Volume 6
Issue 19
Copyright 2019 |Blue Sky Leadership Consulting | All rights reserved
Introduction – Win-Win Will Kill Your Deal
• GM’s PICOS, or Program for the Improvement and Cost Optimization of Suppliers.

“The advertised idea of this ‘costing method’ was to help suppliers hold down their own costs in the
design and production stage of the products they sold to GM. By holding down suppliers’ costs, GM held
down suppliers’ prices and thereby GM’s own costs.” p.4

“Many negotiators play the win-win game with an implicit invitation to debilitating early compromise on
the part of their unwary adversaries…” p. 6

”…smooth-talking negotiators don’t compromise, but they demand that you do.” p. 6

“You can control your assessment of your adversary’s situation, and you can, with a great deal of work
and discipline, control your own actions and decisions, and you can keep your emotions under check.” p.
13

“My principle (and title), “Start with No,” is based on the understanding that “no” is a decision. An early
“yes” is probably a trick, and “maybe” is just that, maybe, and gets you nowhere.” p.13

Your Greatest Weakness in Negotiation: The Dangers of Neediness

“You do NOT need this deal, because to be needy is to lose control and make bad decisions.” p.22

“Tough negotiators are experts at recognizing this neediness in their adversaries, and expert in creating it
as well.” p. 27

Question: How much did the last thing cost that you “needed?”

The Columbo Effect: The Secret of Being “Not Okay”

“The wise negotiator knows that only one person in a negotiation can feel okay, and that person is the
adversary.” p.37

“Letting people help you is an excellent way to help them feel more okay.” p. 40

“This is not trivial gamesmanship. This is honesty, the honesty of unokayness that breaks down barriers.”
p.41

Volume 6
Book Review: Start With No Page 2|8
Issue 19
Start with No: How Decisions Move Negotiations Forward
Question: What makes a “no” different from “yes” and “maybe.”
Activity: When was the last time you said “yes” to something followed by a “if,” “but,” “however,”
“when,” or some other condition that wasn’t part of the “yes?” Share this with a person near you

Every person has the right to say “no”

Saying “no,” inviting “no,” hearing “no”: these are all-powerful tools for any well-trained negotiator. p. 52

Never “Save the Adversary”

“The unspoken—or sometimes spoken—assumption behind win-win is that people enter negotiations
trying to build friendly relationships and want to leave with that relationship intact.” p.61

Success Comes from This Foundation: Develop Your Mission and Purpose

Question: When was the last time you made a decision that DID NOT support your mission and purpose?

List of Doubts That Disrupt Effective Decision-Making p. 70

• “Why take this deal?”

• “The whole thing sounds too good.”
• “Maybe I can win even more.”
• “Why are they making this so easy?”
• “What do they know that I don’t know?”
• “This can’t be right.”
• “How can I get out of this?

Question: Why are money and power not valid in your mission and purpose?

Your Mission and Purpose Is Set In Your Adversary’s World

“Setting the mission and purpose in the constituents’ or the customer’s or the adversary’s world allows all
of them to see clearly the features and benefits that you and your product or service have to offer them.” p.
79

Question: Do you completely support the mission and purpose of the company you work for today? Were
you part of the negotiation? Did you have the right to say “no?”

Volume 6
Book Review: Start With No Page 3|8
Issue 19
Stop Trying to Control the Outcome
“Goals you can control, objectives you cannot. By following your behavioral goals, you get to your
objectives.” p. 92

Question: Why are quantitative goals dangerous?

“By following your valid goals you obtain your objective. By obtaining your objective you further your
mission and purpose. At all times you set goals and objectives that are as valid as the mission and purpose
they serve.” p.94

Question: How much time do you spend on payside activity? Non-payside activity?

Activity:
Risk Reward
Payside
Non-Payside

Pilot Training Folder

“You, too, should keep a daily record and use it to identify strengths and weaknesses… This daily habit of
analyzing performance and correcting it is critical to success.” p. 99

What Do You Say?

“The adversary’s answers to our questions build the vision that he needs to make decisions. No vision, no
real decision: this is a rule of human nature.” p.103

Verb-led questions vs. Interrogative-led questions

Question: Who has control in a discussion: the speaker or the listener?

How Do You Say It?

The Five Fuels of Behavioral Goals:
1. Nurturing (Questioning)
2. Reversing (Questioning)
3. Connecting (Questioning)
4. 3+ (Questioning)
5. Strip Line

Volume 6
Book Review: Start With No Page 4|8
Issue 19
“Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them.” p. 125

Question: What is an example of a negative strip line? What is an example of a positive strip line?

Quiet Your Mind, Create a Blank Slate: No Expectations, No Assumptions, No

Talking
Question: When was the last time your positive expectation caused disappointment?

“Assumptions are like expectations in that we can’t get rid of them, but as good negotiators we can beware
of them.” p.147

“When we are spare with our words, we are able to ask much more focused questions, which keep us on
track and give us clearer pictures. If you can’t keep from talking, you won’t be able to blank slate.” p. 153

Question: What should you do if you can’t create a blank slate?

Know Their “Pain,” Paint Their “Pain”

Question: What’s the difference between a vitamin and a pain killer?

“The clearer your adversary’s vision of his pain, the easier the decision-making process.” p. 170

The Real Budget and How to Build It: The Importance of Time, Energy,
Money, and Emotion
“To repeat, budget is the way you keep on top of the real price to be paid in the negotiation, which goes
way beyond dollars and cents.” P.183

“If our energy is wasted, it is of our own doing. We cannot blame the adversary, because we are in control
of our own behavior. Most well-trained adversaries will try to use energy against you, whether they would
put their actions in these terms or not.” P. 193

Activity: Put Time, Energy, Money, and Emotion into order of highest to lowest importance for you.
Share your answer and reason with someone near you.

Volume 6
Book Review: Start With No Page 5|8
Issue 19
The Shell Game
“the decision-making process within your adversary’s organization must be discovered and understood at
the very beginning of the negotiation, or as soon thereafter as possible.” P.203

Question: When was the last time you left someone out of the negotiation?

Have an Agenda and Work It: Ride the Chaos Inherent in Negotiation

“The only agenda that is valid for purposes of negotiation is the one that has been negotiated with the
adversary.” P. 217

“A valid agenda or mini-agenda has five basic categories: 1. Problems 2. Our baggage 3. Their baggage 4.
What we want 5. What happens next” p.219

Present Your Case—If You Insist: Beware the Seductions of PowerPoint

“The greatest presentation you will ever give is the one your adversary never sees.” p.235
Activity: Discuss with someone near you what makes a great presentation

“Present only the information that addresses your adversary’s concern…” p. 238

Life’s Great Lesson: The Only Assurance of Long-Term Success

“Self-esteem is your internal appraisal of yourself as an individual, and nothing can affect it. Okayness is
your public presentation of yourself.” P.245

Volume 6
Book Review: Start With No Page 6|8
Issue 19
The 33 Rules to Remember
1. Every negotiation is an agreement between two or more parties with all parties having the right to
veto—the right to say “no.”
2. Your job is not to be liked. It is to be respected and effective.
3. Results are not valid goals.
4. Money has nothing to do with a valid mission and purpose.
5. Never, ever, spill your beans in the lobby—or anywhere else.
6. Never enter a negotiation—never make a phone call—without a valid agenda.
7. The only valid goals are those you can control: behavior and activity.
8. Mission and purpose must be set in the adversary’s world; our world must be secondary.
9. Spend maximum time on payside activity and minimum time on nonpayside activity.
10. You do not need it. You only want it.
11. No saving. You cannot save the adversary.
12. Only one person in a negotiation can feel okay. That person is the adversary.
13. All action—all decision—begins with vision. Without vision, there is no action.
14. Always show respect to the blocker.
15. All agreements must be clarified point by point and sealed three times (using 3+).
16. The clearer the picture of pain, the easier the decision-making process.
17. The value of the negotiation increases by multiples as time, energy, money, and emotion are spent.
18. No talking.
19. Let the adversary save face at all times.
20. The greatest presentation you will ever give is the one your adversary will never see.
21. A negotiation is only over when we want it to be over.
22. “No” is good, “yes” is bad, “maybe” is worse.
23. Absolutely no closing.
24. Dance with the tiger.
25. Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness (Emerson).
26. Paint the pain.
27. Mission and purpose drive everything.
28. Decisions are 100 percent emotional.
29. Interrogative-led questions drive vision.
30. Nurture.
31. No assumptions. No expectations. Only blank slate.
32. Who are the decision makers? Do you know all of them?
33. Pay forward.

Volume 6
Book Review: Start With No Page 7|8
Issue 19
 Our Faculty and Our Sponsors

Actions What thought, or idea had the biggest impact on you today?

What is your ONE THING? What one specific action you will take
TODAY from what was discussed?

_________________________________________________
Calendar of Events

Volume 6
Issue 19
Copyright 2019 |Blue Sky Leadership Consulting | All rights reserved