“You don’t have to be afraid of negotiating”

Negotiation coach Alex Carter begins her April 2024 TEDx talk, “How to Ask for More and Get It,” by telling the most important thing she learned about negotiating while kayaking. In the talk, which has more than 580,000 views as of this writing, she said she had been teaching negotiation strategies for several years before kayaking with her husband on their honeymoon in Hawaii. But after the pair capsized three times while paddling separately, the tour guide suggested they needed to “negotiate” taking their kayaks to the beach. Carter had never heard the word used in this way, and she said she realized she was missing “something important.”

Many of us have misunderstandings about negotiations, she said. “We were told it was a money fight and that it meant losing. So, we either feared it or avoided it entirely.” That day also turned the idea of ​​negotiation as a contest of wills on its head. “What am I doing as I kayak toward the beach?” she asked. “I’m in charge.” The first of five lessons she shared in her talk: Negotiation is any conversation in which you navigate a relationship.

Carter is a professor at Columbia Law School, a United Nations negotiation trainer, and a best-selling author. Ask More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anythingwill lead two PCMA Business School sessions: “Strategies for Asking for More and Achieving Better Negotiation Results” on January 14 during the 2025 Leadership Conference, followed by a live coaching session. she and convene How event organizers can more easily navigate relationships with vendor partners and what Convening Leaders attendees can expect from her sessions.

How would you sum up your thoughts on negotiations?

When I tell people my approach to negotiation, I simply say, “I don’t ask. I recruit.” I never want to talk to the person across the table. I’m trying to figure out, “How do I write their victory speech while I’m writing my victory speech?” I want to think about how I can use things like questions to pull them over to my side so that we now become mutual A co-conspirator working toward a goal.

People often talk about negotiating as if you are facing your opponent, but in most businesses, especially in the event planning industry, the “opponents” – the people running the hotel, the catering staff, the designers you contract with Host your event – ​​once negotiations are complete, they become your partner. You work together to create the best, most effective, most impactful event possible.

So my whole approach is to think about how I can work with other people to produce a product that’s both good for my company and that I want them to work with me over and over again.

I love this, especially since our industry is so dependent on relationships. One of the things planners have lamented post-pandemic is that they’ve lost the relationships they built with vendors due to attrition, so your approach about building long-term relationships really resonates.

I would say one of the things I like to talk about is building “deep relationships” with every customer, every supplier, every partner. So consider how to avoid being in a situation where you only know one person at the venue. How can you get to know multiple people there at the same time and have them get to know multiple people around you?

First, when you do this, it increases the likelihood that someone will connect and it will become a really fruitful partnership. And, with the job market so volatile and so many people jumping from company to company or location to location, these deep, lasting relationships not only mean you’re likely to keep your current supplier As a partner, and probably also as an original person, you build a great relationship with someone who likes you enough that they’ll call you to work with them wherever they go next.

Another thing: One of my cardinal rules is to never treat anyone like a passerby. I don’t care if I call the hotel, I get a call from the front desk person. Never make assumptions about how much power or influence someone has. When I find a front desk clerk, when I find an assistant to the person I want to talk to, I connect with that person. I built relationships with them. Sometimes I ask how they are doing and how I can help them do their jobs. I have found countless times that the person who initially answers the phone has huge influence behind the scenes, and by treating them as a true partner rather than a deliverer, you can turn them into an advocate for the deal.

Can you give us a sense of what convening leadership participants can expect from your conference?

I’m going to take people on a journey. I wanted to show them some of the mistakes I made early in my career. The way I was thinking about negotiating was wrong. What I did was wrong. One day I realized that everything I had learned was wrong. That moment was my honeymoon.

I learned a profound lesson about negotiation on my honeymoon that will stay with me throughout my life. This moment put me in the driver’s seat of my career in a way I had never felt before. Since then, I have traveled the world sharing simple techniques with people that they can use to not only feel confident and in control in any negotiation situation, but also to live in accordance with their values.

In other words, we can do good things in the process of doing good things. We can simultaneously host incredible events, have a thriving career, and be someone that partners across the country and world want to pick up the phone and do business with. We can make a lot of money and we can live with integrity.

Through a combination of research and personal stories, I hope to give people some hope, some inspiration, and some tactical tools they can take with them and put into practice on the day. At the last event I attended, someone came up to me on the last day of the conference and said, “I want you to know that the deal I negotiated today cost more than what I paid to attend the event. Thank you so much.” That. is an event planner meeting.

This is a man who is about to undercut himself on something. At the client’s request, the event was much larger than originally budgeted. The event planner agreed, executed the new plan flawlessly, and then cut costs almost at the last minute without even going to the client first. After listening to my presentation and visiting my workshop, she decided to approach the client candidly and simply said: “Plans changed. Together we created a beautiful new event. This is an investment.” was all the client said Say “Okay” and pay the money. It’s more than the person’s registration fee. Just a phone call away.

I hope people leave this experience with tools they can immediately put into practice at work, as well as tools that will help them in their personal lives outside of work, because we don’t stop negotiating when we get off work. The tools I’m going to teach you will be useful in any relationship you have. I don’t guarantee results for anyone under 18 – I have a teenager at home and I’m still working on it. But people tell me over and over again that these tools just make their lives better. This is what I want to share with them. You don’t have to be afraid of negotiating. This is just a conversation.

Michelle Russell is the author of “ held.

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TEDx talk by Alex Carter