INTRODUCTION: IT'S NEVER BEEN HARDER TO BE A SALESPERSON

'Jim, I have no clue why we lost this business.'

I heard that sentence come from a couple of rows in front of me on a flight from New York to Frankfurt. I smiled and respectfully tried to ignore the conversation. But the salesperson had one of those game-show-host voices that are impossible to ignore. When he continued to talk, I could hardly believe my ears.1

'It was some newcomer', the salesperson said, adjusting one of his earbuds. 'Basically, the same product, but they got a higher price?!? I mean, explain that one to me, huh.'

He paused for a moment when the flight attendant handed him a drink. The fact that the flight attendant called him 'Mr. Anderson' clued me in that this wasn't his first flight back from a sales negotiation.

'I followed the request by the book', Anderson said. 'No idea how this could happen. I really did not see this coming.'

Needless to say, I could empathize. After over two decades spent at negotiating tables around the world, I could recall several lost negotiations that I couldn't immediately understand or explain. But at that moment, as I watched other passengers boarding the plane, I felt a mixture of happiness and relief. Why? I was on my way back from closing an important deal, one which my team stood little chance of winning - at least on paper - against the incumbent, a multinational conglomerate.

Figure I.1 Gaby breaks down a victory in the Invisible Game

Then Anderson's voice once again rose above the noise of baggage compartments slamming shut and seatbelts clicking.

'Yeah, yeah. You're probably right', Anderson said. 'Aurelio just wanted a change. Nothing we could have done to prevent that happening.'

Hearing the name 'Aurelio' gave me a strange chill. How slim are the chances that a procurement manager named Aurelio would reject Anderson's offer on the same day that my team had agreed to a landmark deal with a procurement manager named . Aurelio?

It dawned on me that the gentleman two rows ahead of me was debriefing with his headquarters about a deal he had just lost to my team. That moment forced me to reflect on exactly how and why we convinced Aurelio's company to work with us as their supplier.

Why did we win?

Let's start with Anderson's vague blanket justification for losing the deal. They believed that their customer just wanted 'change'. That was their fatal misperception, one that my team didn't make.

In my assessment, our competitor had apparently disregarded or dismissed the nuances and intricacies of decision making. That not only means the way that professional buyers decide which supplier gets a multi-million-dollar contract it also means the way people, in general, make decisions.

I have no idea whether Anderson and his team underestimated that complexity or were unaware of it, but in the end, it didn't matter. My team overcame the odds and won a deal that superficially looked like nothing more than a battle between me-too products, one new and one familiar. Anderson and his team had done a lot of the right things and a lot of things right, but we had won by going beyond the obvious and offering a combination of reassurance, trust, and a promising future.

For example, we knew about the behaviours that derive from the endowment effect, and that's why we can confidently say that 'change' might have been the last thing that Aurelio wanted. Richard Thaler, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2017 for his studies of real-world human behaviour, coined the term 'endowment effect' in 1980 to describe the situation when people demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.2 So we knew how difficult it would be to influence any customer, never mind Aurelio, to turn away from an incumbent.

That's why my team focused on reassurance, trust, and future opportunities. Right from the start, our reassurance strategy gave the impression of low risk and low switching costs. We were new to the customer, so we focused on relationship-building to establish trust between them and our account team. Our language, our dress, and our tone all aimed to support the perception of familiarity, as 'one of them'. It worked because it was authentic. We had a lot in common with them.

Finally, we knew we had a me-too product, so we didn't try to invent some creative or clever value claims. Instead, we stressed future opportunities by presenting Aurelio with a concrete proposal for co-innovation to drive mutual growth. In terms of prices, our choice architecture gave Aurelio some appealing trade-offs. He ultimately picked a slightly higher price in return for more resilience in their supply chain, something that we felt our competitor couldn't offer with the same level of assurance.3

When I returned home after that flight, I called Kai, my consultant at the time, to celebrate the success and share my experience. I had met Kai during my most difficult time as an account manager. It was in the aftermath of the Great Recession. For me, that period between 2008 and 2011 marks the time when buyers focused on generating savings from their external spending. My toolbox of relationship-selling techniques, acquired and fine-tuned during my career to that point, became obsolete. What's the use of even the most sophisticated hammer when the problem is no longer a nail?

The nightmare of seeing the old ways disappear - and having no clue about what the 'new ways' would look like - led to many sleepless nights. My margins started to decline, first slowly and then rapidly. I worked under constant fear of losing business. Whenever I doubted my sales approaches and looked for alternatives, I realized that conventional sales wisdom was an empty well. It offered no responses to the newly emerging challenges.

That's when I came across Kai's first book, NeuroPricing, which introduced me to some intriguing concepts.4 When we met, he quickly hooked me on the latest insights from neuroscience and behavioural economics. His guidance helped me develop a new understanding of how people behave in negotiations and how those behaviours affect the outcomes. With a trial-and-error approach, I learned to apply those insights successfully, improved my business, and restored my confidence.

Those initial successes made me want more.

Time is money . but not why you think it is

Eureka moments usually come from mundane or tedious events, often by accident. Mine didn't come from a mouldy Petri dish, which is how Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin.5 Nor did I accidentally drop a mix of India rubber and sulphur onto a hot stove and 'invent' vulcanized rubber the way Charles Goodyear did.6

No, mine began with a mind-numbing line of questioning to a pharmaceutical industry expert, which I mercifully shorten and summarize.7 After 10 years in academia, I had a PhD in cognitive neuroscience in my backpack and my name on several scientific studies. Then I moved to what academics call the dark side - the real world of industry. The objective of my project at the time was to help a company set the price for a new medication.

'Would you reimburse this drug at a daily rate of ?1.50?' I asked the expert.

'Absolutely', she said. So I continued the line of questioning.

'Would you reimburse this drug at a daily rate of ?2.00?'

'Sure.'

'Would you reimburse this drug at a daily rate of ?2.50?'

There was no immediate answer. In hindsight I'm sure her hesitation was brief, but it jarred me at the time.

'Hmmm. ?2.50? That's a tough one', she said. 'Hmmm . Probably not. Hmmm. let's say no, OK?'

Figure I.2 Kai explains the Eureka moment that helped to inspire the Invisible Game

My questionnaire still had a few more price points above ?2.50. It was now obvious that she would reject those too, but protocols required me to ask her about them anyway. This was not simply to populate the rest of the cells in my Excel sheet, but to observe how she would answer the questions and what she would say.

'Would you reimburse this drug at a daily rate of ?3.00?'

'Hmmm . that drug does have some impressive features', she said. '?3.00? Well, I already said 'no' to a price of ?2.50, right? So this has to be a "no".'

'Would you reimburse this drug at a daily rate of ?3.50?'

'Nope!' she said immediately.

'Would you reimburse this drug at a daily rate of . .'

'No way!' she said, before I could even give her the number.

Did you see the shift in the pattern of the respondent's answers? When she thought the price was too low or too high, she said 'yes' or 'no' without hesitation. But at the price points of ?2.50 and ?3.00, she struggled.

That sparked my curiosity. I reckoned that this significant delay offered a glimpse into her subconscious...