A former international hostage negotiator for the FBI offers a new field-tested approach to high-stakes negotiations - whether in the boardroom or at home.

After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator.

Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss' head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: in saving lives. In this practical guide, he shares the nine effective principles - counterintuitive tactics and strategies - you, too, can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal lives.

Life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for: buying a car, negotiating a salary, buying a home, renegotiating rent, deliberating with your partner. Taking emotional intelligence and intuition to the next level, Never Split the Difference gives you the competitive edge in any discussion.

Listening Length

8 hours and 7 minutes
Author

Chris Voss
Narrator

Michael Kramer
Audible release date

May 17, 2016
Language

English
Publisher

HarperAudio
ASIN

B01COR1GM2
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	8 hours and 7 minutes
Author	Chris Voss
Narrator	Michael Kramer
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	May 17, 2016
Publisher	HarperAudio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B01COR1GM2
Best Sellers Rank	#52 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #1 in Communication Skills #1 in Job Hunting & Career Guides #1 in Business Negotiating (Books)

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stedlaw

This is one of the two best books anyone can read on negotiation

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2016

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My bona fides: I have professionally negotiated for over thirty years. Do it daily. I've taken approximately 20 hours of graduate study in negotiation and conflict resolution. I occasionally lecture on the subject.

My rating: This is one of the two best books anyone can read on negotiation. The other is Cialdini's famous, "Influence: The Art and Science of Persuasion." While there are many good books on the subject, I can't think of any others that are as complete and useful as these.

Advice: Remember that negotiation is a practice. You will be best aided by these books by taking a chapter at a time and practice the ideas and techniques. Practice them on your family, on your colleagues and on your friends. (Forget pets. Dogs are too obliging and cats too indifferent.)

2,018 people found this helpful

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Yan-David Erlich

This book changed my life and could change yours. What is stopping you from reading it?

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2016

Verified Purchase

My guess is around 70% of my purchases are made on Amazon: it's a lot of stuff, both for home and for my company. This is the first item (across all categories) that I've written a review for. I'm compelled because this book has changed my life, and I suspect it can change yours — What do you have to lose by reading it?

I thought I’d learned what I needed to know about negotiation. I went to a prestigious business school and took their negotiation class, learning all about Getting Yes, BATNA, and other fancy acronyms. I’d also had to bargain my share in both work and personal life. Yet, I felt like the tools I’d been given were meant for some alternate reality where people are totally dispassionate, rational robots, doing math in their heads to get to logical outcomes. The negotiations I’d been in with were instead with passionate, irrational (including myself) humans, sometimes getting angry or sad, often making decisions that didn’t “make any sense” (to me). I was pretty sure the negotiation outcomes we were getting to were subpar, both for me and for them: a lot of splitting the difference, mostly to make the negotiations — which felt uncomfortable for all parties — stop.

Note, when I mean “negotiation”, I’m speaking pretty broadly: from “negotiating" with my fiancée on who should walk the dog tonight, to negotiating with an employee on why this feature needed to be built urgently, to negotiating with an angry customer who’d called me angry about something, to negotiating with my parents on wedding plans, the list goes on. Each negotiation tougher and more emotional than the next, yet with tools that told me emotions didn’t matter. Huh?

I don’t remember how I came across Never Split the Difference, but man, am I glad I did. The book exposed me to a whole different way of negotiating, questioning the rational toolkit I’d been given in business school and replacing it with a more human set of tools. This set based on psychology and understanding of normal human emotions. It builds on empathy and active listening skills, layers on ways to label emotions and ask open-ended calibrated questions. It includes polite ways to say “no” without offending the other party, and many more. Most importantly it builds a framework that lets you deeply understand what the other party needs, wants, and desires, and work with them to achieve an outcome where you get your goals met — without ever “splitting the difference” again.

And it has worked wonders. Since reading this book, I have:
- Forged a better relationship with my fiancée by actively listening to her before jointly finding solutions
- Negotiated successful resolutions to emotionally charged topics with parents and friends
- Brought angry customers — who felt we had failed them — back from the brink to trusting us again
- Forged a better relationship with my business partners by understanding how they value time, silence, relationships, surprises, etc…
- Gotten discounts on things that I didn’t think could be discounted, just by using my name
- Gotten to the front of the waiting line at busy restaurants
- Said no to bad deals, because no deal is better than a bad one
- the list goes on.

I warn you that this book is the start of a rabbit hole that you might want to keep digging down. I’ve recommended this book to anyone who will listen, personally bought it 29 times as a gift for friends & coworkers alike, taken an online class (taught by the author’s son, a brilliant negotiator in his own right), etc...

Negotiation, in the broadest sense as described above, is something I want to become an expert in, because I now understand that every conversation is a negotiation. This is likely the most useful skill you can learn and apply.

It all started with this book. Are you too busy to read it?

1,144 people found this helpful

Helpful

Chris Voss is an impressive guy, BUT..

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2017

Verified Purchase

The book is roughly is 60% war stories, 20% sales pitch for the book and courses and only 20% how to. Starting on the very first page it tries to make you believe Chris's son has been kidnapped, then reveals it's just a scenario at Harvard, which sets the tone early.

Rather than spending your money and time on this book, I would suggest taking a look at Voss's YouTube videos, he says everything in the book in less than 10 min across a few different vids, minus all the war stories, and you get more out of it, because you hear his tone and the way he puts things.

Read the whole thing, was a bit disappointed, promises the world until the last page, but doesn't really deliver.

2,063 people found this helpful

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Dan Liesener

Careless Printing Cuts Off Pages

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2019

Verified Purchase

This book started off as a great, helpful read. Unfortunately, as I started to get deeper in the book, the printing began to cut off major pieces of pages, causing important details to be missing. I am enjoying the book and want to finish reading it, but I don’t want to continue to miss items on pages. I tried to exchange the book for a new one, but Amazon’s return policy will not allow me to do so. It seems unfair that the only way to read the whole book is to purchase another copy.

521 people found this helpful

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Lance

Should be a 5 minute video

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2020

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Imagine this: Let's say you pay a private music teacher $50 for a one hour music lesson. The teacher then spends 15 minutes providing you with instruction, and the other 45 minutes relaying stories and anecdotes of how she came to learn these lessons herself during her long career as a world-class performer.

You would fire the teacher.

This is my least favorite genre of book - the bait and switch non fiction. Expert promises to share expertise with you, then writes a book that is 90% autobiography and 10% useful, actionable information.

250 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

M. Turner

Too "American", poor writing style, and terribly simplistic!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2020

Verified Purchase

One of the reviews i read about this book stated that "this book is such an eye opener"! I tried very hard to enjoy this book, and persevered as much as i could but the writing style is hard to connect with and i found the author to be quite egotistical whilst making outrageous claims backed up with "Trump-esque" back stories eg it was a very very bad situation... but i did something really really great... probably better than anyone has ever handled a situation like this before blah blah! There is nothing new in this book. I still have no idea how this book could have gotten such great reviews. Poor examples throughout, very boringly written and page after page became more and more frustrating. This is not an eye-opener! I struggled to keep my eyes open!!

I had high hopes for this book... waste of money. I've just thrown it into the bin!

137 people found this helpful

Grahame Cossum

Quite simply..it works.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 22, 2018

Verified Purchase

I have read the book and watched a pile of Chris Voss Youtube videos.
This stuff works a treat if, and only if you are willing to put the methods into practice
on a daily basis. I am using it constantly every single day and it has produced amazing results.
As Chris Voss said "everything is a negotiation" and I would agree 100% it's just i've never noticed it before..but i do now.
Try it out for yourself, you will be surprised at how effective it is.
Just be prepared to put in the work required to learn a new skill. I really had to laugh at one of the negative reviews that implied they should
now be a skilled negotiator as if reading the book once worked like some sort of osmosis straight from Chris Voss.
Yeah...get real mate.

166 people found this helpful

Dr Tommy W

Bought book for £4.45. Negotiated a £46,000 discount a few months later, using techniques from the book. Good investment!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2018

Verified Purchase

Great book. The stories Chris tells helps me to retain the concepts he's putting across and those concepts really do seem to work.

A couple of weeks after starting the book I negotiated a vendor at work from a 'list price' of about £68,000 for some equipment down to about £22,000*, partly by applying techniques from this book. Given that I spent £4.45 on the book, I think it's paid for itself by now.

*Obviously, having read the book my final offer was not a rounded number. Read it yourself, and you'll see what I mean.

141 people found this helpful

Grace

This helped to improve my relationship with my child

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 31, 2019

Verified Purchase

I occasionally saw an interview with Chris Voss on YouTube and it mentioned this book, so I decided to get the book. It turned out this probably the best few quid I have spent in a very long time.

I am half way through the book, it took a while to read as I have decided to digest the techniques and to see how effective they are.

I have applied mirroring, showing empathy labelling techniques when I communicating with my daughter and I found I have stopped saying no to her automatically and the relationship has improved since.

71 people found this helpful

K. B

Poor quality printing job. Disappointed.

Reviewed in Canada on March 8, 2020

Verified Purchase

I’m enjoying the book but I’m dismayed by the poor quality of the book with some pages printed in a way that sentences are missing. I’ve never seen this before. See pictures.

The poor printing is not the whole book and only on a dozen pages. But still, very disappointing.

101 people found this helpful

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