I recently finished reading “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss. The book discusses negotiation strategies from the perspective of a top FBI hostage negotiator. 

I love to read but was skeptical when picking up this book. I admittedly am not comfortable with negotiation. Maybe I’m too conflict-averse, or perhaps I’m too much of a people pleaser. But actively engaging in negotiation has always spiked my heart rate and left me a sweaty mess. 

As I read the first few chapters, my hesitance quickly faded. The style of negotiation Voss coaches is one that should be quite familiar to those in our industry. Empathy and rapport are favored at the expense of brute force persuasion. I quickly realized that Voss’s tactics are exceedingly relevant for our industry. 

I’m excited to share a few of my favorite strategic takeaways about negotiation and how they can be applied to perhaps the only situation more contentious than a hostage negotiation: A collection call.

We seem to intrinsically hate hearing the word “No”. “No” signifies the end of the conversation. Of the metaphorical door being slammed in our face. As a missed opportunity to help someone find a solution. 

Voss approaches it differently. To him, it is actually a good thing to hear “No”. “No” signifies the start of the negotiation rather than the end of it. Giving someone permission to say “No” preserves their autonomy and enables a sense of comfort for them. Many times, it is the first step towards building meaningful rapport. 

Voss recommends that we retrain ourselves to approach “No” differently. We should view it not as a definitive closed door, but as an expression of a wide variety of other potential real explanations for what the consumer is expressing: 

When we hear “No”, we should translate it to “Not yet”. Listen acutely to what the consumer is saying - and what they are not saying. Continue to build a rapport with them, alleviate their concerns, then circle back to the question. 

Another perspective from Voss regarding “No”: It is far better than an insincere “Yes”. Many people will tell us what we want to hear simply to get out of an uncomfortable conversation. I’m sure no one reading this has ever had a consumer tell them what they wanted to hear and fail to follow through!

Voss recommends using carefully-curated questions that are designed to subtly shift the conversation in the direction you want it to go while making it think that it is the consumer’s decision to take it there. He calls this approach calibrated questioning. 

Calibrated questions are open-ended (never closed!) questions that encourage the consumer to think critically and then respond. Calibrated questions should never start with active words like “can”, “is” or “does”, as they are closed-ended questions that allow the consumer to respond with simple “yes” or “no”. 

Think about how often your team uses those words. I bet it’s quite often! I know I’ve heard some variation of “Can you pay this balance today?” thousands of times in my career. 

Voss believes calibrated questions should almost always start with “how” or “what”. Even “why” should be avoided, as it tends to encourage a reflexively defensive response. 

Voss recommends some classic calibrated questions that are applicable to almost any negotiation. Think about how you can apply these in your office and about others you can create to shift the conversation towards where you want it to go. 

Voss describes labeling as the process of validating someone’s emotions. He recommends giving someone’s emotion a name to show that you identify with how they feel. It gets you closer to someone without having to ask a bunch of invasive questions.

Let’s put this into practice. Instead of asking “why aren’t you able to pay this bill?” listen to the consumer’s tone and label them. Say it with empathy and understanding in your voice. Applying Voss’s approach to labeling something like this: 

“It sounds like you’re frustrated”

“It seems like you’re really going through a hard time”

“It sounds like this is stressful for you.”

Voss recommends using passive phrasing like “sounds” and “seems” to show that you’re estimating the consumer’s feelings rather than actively claiming to understand them. 

This is important: After applying the label, sit back in silence. Apply the strategic pause. The power of the label is that it invites the consumer to open up and reveal more. 

If you applied the label correctly, they will open up and tell you why. If you were wrong, that’s ok too! They will likely correct you and share more in the process. Either way, the consumer is now talking more and opening sharing information that we can use to build a rapport and find a solution.

Use this LLM prompt to create an engaging role-playing exercise when training new collector hires:

“Act as a debtor/consumer that owes a balance for (describe type of account you are training your team on). Your role is to help collectors prepare to respond to questions they will receive from debtors/consumers. For this exercise, focus on questions related to (Provide descriptions, if relevant, for the types of questions you want to focus on). The user will input "another question", after which you are to respond with the question. Start with questions that are common and easy to respond to, and slowly make the questions progressively more difficult to respond to”

Bonus: Describe the format (verbal, text message, email, web chat) that the questions will be received in to tailor the questions accordingly

Bonus: Add a 2nd layer where the user will ask for a question, then type a response. Ask the LLM to grade the quality of the response and provide a rationale for the grading, then generate a new question after grading the response.

This prompt is included in the ARM LLM Prompting Guide, available for free in EngageARM!

ICYMI: Highlights from last week’s edition. Click here to view the entire post.

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Cheers,

Nate

EngageARM.com