In this episode of The Confident Negotiator Podcast, we’re excited to have Alfredo Lago, a Brazil-based RED BEAR Senior Facilitator, join us. With over two decades of experience training negotiators across the globe, Alfredo brings a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective on the art of negotiation.
During the conversation, Alfredo shares valuable insights on navigating complex negotiations, particularly in South America. He delves into the importance of positioning, managing tension, and understanding cultural dynamics to achieve successful outcomes. Alfredo also recounts compelling stories from his own experience, illustrating how RED BEAR’s principles can be applied to real-world negotiations for maximum impact. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to negotiation, this episode is packed with practical advice that can help you enhance your negotiation skills.
Transcription of the Video:
Rob Cox: Hello everyone and welcome to The Confident Negotiator Podcast. I'm Rob Cox and with me today is RED BEAR Senior Facilitator Alfredo Lago. Alfredo, thank you so much for joining us today.
Alfredo Lago: Pleasure is mine, Rob
Rob Cox: Alfredo, you've been training negotiators for RED BEAR all over the world now for over a decade. I know everyone is excited to hear from you today. So let's dive right in. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you help RED BEAR customers become world-class negotiators.
Alfredo Lago: Okay. Well, long ago I studied chemistry at university. And when lightning struck my head, metaphorically speaking of course, I changed to the world of training and development. Well that was more than 20 years ago, and I considered that I can match dynamism with a sense of humor and seriousness at the same time. And I always get some feedback that I deliver in a very light way and people don't feel time passing. I can contribute to RED BEAR participants by showing them how passionate I am about these things and sharing my real-life examples on top of everything that I try to communicate in terms of sense of humor, dynamism, etc.
Rob Cox: Excellent. Well, I hear that your sessions are a lot of fun to attend, Alfredo. Everyone learns so much from you. So thank you again for making time here for us today. My next question for you is, of all the principles that you get to teach in your workshops, which ones are the most difficult for workshop attendees to initially wrap their heads around?
Alfredo Lago: It seems to be that people have more difficulty in understanding positioning. Why is that? Because in Portuguese and Spanish, those are the main languages that I teach, positioning means that you have a kind of certain behavior. So it's not like the principle that we teach. So it's more difficult for them to understand that they need to get an attention grabber and to name and to present a negotiation in a different way and to choose a theme and then to repeat it and to believe in the theme. So people, when I ask for examples, they do not have because they are thinking again, "Oh, what exactly was this position?" I think this is the most difficult one.
Rob Cox: Excellent. That makes sense. You talked a little bit about positioning there. Are there any other concepts that you think are difficult that maybe workshop attendees struggle with initially, both in South America and in general?
Alfredo Lago: I think in general, people have the wrong idea that tension is not good in a negotiation. And not that it's difficult, but is a kind of change in their mindset, once they realize that tension can work in our favor. So it's a kind of surprise for them and people feel like, "Oh, I never thought about it." So it's a provocative insight for them. And also concessions. So I think we can say in general as well, not only South America, but people are lazy to plan thoroughly. So whenever you do not plan concessions, for instance, they do not have a concession strategy because they think they can remember all of the things that are playing in the negotiation and that's not true. So you need to rely on a very solid plan and concessions plan in order to send the right message for the other person that is negotiating.
Rob Cox: Excellent. Thank you for explaining some of those different cultural dynamics. I know that you teach all over the world for RED BEAR in a couple of different languages. Thank you for doing this podcast in English, for me, so I appreciate that. My next question for you is about perception. Let's talk about perception. What mistakes do you notice with workshop attendees when it comes to the power of perception?
Alfredo Lago: Mistakes? Well, I think the most common and the most impactful one is that people are more used to negotiating price. The first thing that they want to negotiate is price. So when you are negotiating price, you are making the other person close some of their listening capacity and you are going to be stuck on an arm wrestling over numbers and you are not considering to increase the size of the pie. In other words, to increase the amount of value that is at stake that you can split. Not necessarily evenly, but if you are increasing size of the pie, chances are that you are going to get better results even though you cannot split this pie equally.
Rob Cox: Excellent. And I know in your workshops you teach a lot of methods for how to expand that pie and not just focus in on price or anything else that may narrowly affect a negotiation. Excellent.
Alfredo Lago: Absolutely.
Rob Cox: Now, you've talked a little bit about some of the cultural differences with negotiators. Are there any stereotypical mistakes that North Americans or anyone else for that matter get wrong when they're negotiating with South Americans or vice versa?
Alfredo Lago: Yeah, well, there is one important component as far as communication is concerned, which is assertiveness. In Portuguese and in Spanish asertar is to be on target. And it's very misleading for us here. Assertiveness is simply to be firm without being aggressive. And in my experience, Americans and Europeans are more assertive than Latins. And why is this? Because we Latins take firmness as aggressiveness and we mistake one for the other. So we have a very thin layer of what's called the tolerance zone. So either we are too comfortable in our comfort zone, escaping tension and not creating enough tension in the negotiation, or we are being aggressive and more emotional.
So it's very difficult to be firm, serious, and not aggressive at the same time. And I think Americans think that Latins can be more assertive, and as we are not, we take them as being too aggressive. And that's only a different in directness in communication and in the firmness in which you're going to ask for things or you're going to put some limits or say no or whatever. So I think that's the most stereotyping view of one another in the negotiations.
Rob Cox: Excellent. I know in the workshops too, you explain how to negotiate with different cultures as well, so that's a nice overview there of some of the different audiences that you would speak to. Now, you've utilized RED BEAR principles, not just professionally for over a decade, but personally as well. Can you share a story of a time when RED BEAR principles actually led to a successful negotiation for you personally?
Alfredo Lago: I have two stories. One is a very short and another not so short. But the first one is when I was visiting a customer and the customer said to me, "Hey, Alfredo, very good that you came here to negotiate. I've just finished a negotiation course. I'm sharp to negotiate with you." And probably he was expecting to throw me some tension in order to make me out of balance. But as I teach how to be comfortable with tension, I was comfortable with tension, and I simply answered, "Oh, good that you have just finished the course. Now you know that the last thing that we are going to negotiate is price." And I could tell by his face that he thought that all of his power was gone by the faces that he showed. So I got all the power, so I was able to get a very good result in the negotiation.
Rob Cox: Excellent.
Alfredo Lago: Yeah. The second one has to do with one thing that we called an elegant negotiable. Those are items that we can trade that have low cost for the one giving them and high value for the one receiving it.
So about eight years ago when I purchased my house, the house in which I live now, the ex-owner had a deadline to move. And he didn't respect that. So the realtor said to me that I was allowed to charge for 15 days rental. That's the time that he asked to stay over the deadline. And I thought, 'Well, maybe we can get a better solution." Because I was paying for the house, so receive back half a month of rentals it was not a big amount of money. So the guy was the owner of an engineering company that was a supplier of the automotive industry. And I was living in a flat and I was not paying any rentals, so I was not in a hurry. I could let him stay in the house for 15 more days for free. And that's what I did. I just asked that he gave me a contact at one of the automotive companies that I was targeting at the moment.
And it was very nice because for him didn't cost anything for him to give me the contact. The amount of value for me was huge because if I sell one day, if I sold one day there, it would've been kind of well, much better than half a month of rental. And to me, zero cost to leave him 15 more days without paying anything at the house. And huge value also for him because he had a lot of furniture, a dog, two children. So imagine if you had to move to a hotel or to leave the furniture in a warehouse, how costly would have been that. Or even to move to the in-laws. Oh, what a nightmare. So at the end of this, the guy said to me, "Alfredo, I owe you one."
Rob Cox: Excellent. A lot of great stories there, Alfredo. Again, the power dynamics in negotiations and exploring elegant and alternate negotiables, fantastic. Finding something that's of low cost to you, but high value in the negotiation. Fantastic.
Alfredo Lago: That's the way, one of the ways, of increasing the size of the pie. So if I am giving something that doesn't cost me much and receiving in return something of high value and at the same time the other person is receiving something of high value and giving away something of low cost? That's a win-win. Yeah, that's increasing the size of the pie and the amount of value that you're exchanging in the negotiation.
Rob Cox: Excellent. Again, I know you have a lot of methods that you teach in the RED BEAR workshops of how to expand that pie and find those alternate and elegant negotiables. So fantastic. Alfredo, you've been very gracious with your time. Thank you so much. Before I let you go, is there anything else you'd like to say before we wrap up?
Alfredo Lago: Well, a message for everyone. So negotiation, it's a kind of lifelong development. So even if you think you're not good at it, you can negotiate and you can get real results as long as you apply some methodology, have a system in place, and be yourself. I mean, negotiations are almost 100% emotion. Even people think they're rational. They are not. We use reasons, or false reasons, in order to justify our emotions. So if you approach negotiations with this mindset, probably you are going to get better results in general.
Rob Cox: Excellent. Alfredo, thank you again for your time. This has been The Confident Negotiator Podcast. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.
Alfredo Lago: Thank you very much, Rob.
