The World's Most Feared Negotiator
33 Rules of Negotiation by Jim Camp
Known as the “World’s Most Feared Negotiator,” Jim Camp had 33 rules to keep in mind during a negotiation that you can find lower in this page. These rules are also fleshed-out in Camp’s groundbreaking book
Start With NO!
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Who was Jim Camp?
Jim Camp, author of Start With NO…The Negotiating Tools That the Pros Don’t Want You to Know (2002), was a world-renowned negotiation expert who was known for his tough and relentless approach.
Camp’s negotiation techniques were both respected and feared. He was famous for starting every negotiation by asking the other party—the adversary—to disclose their best offer first.
Camp followed up Start with NO in 2007 with No: The Only Negotiating System You Need for Work and Home.
A typical Camp-style approach was to be relatively unemotional and somewhat detached — “a little un-okay” — during negotiations. This allowed him to stay focused and in control.
He did not believe in the “collective bargaining” approach when it came to negotiating deals. Camp’s famous approach was to “start with no” as opposed to working toward a “win-win” situation.
Despite his fearsome reputation, Camp was also a respected author and speaker who shared his expertise with others seeking to become better negotiators.
Camp's other book
• Every negotiation is an agreement between two or more parties with all parties having the right to veto—the right to say “no.”
• Your job is not to be liked. It is to be respected and effective.
• Results are not valid goals.
• Money has nothing to do with a valid mission and purpose.
• Never, ever, spill your beans in the lobby—or anywhere else.
• Never enter a negotiation—never make a phone call—without a valid agenda.
• The only valid goals are those you can control: behavior and activity.
• Mission and purpose must be set in the adversary’s world; our world must be secondary.
• Spend maximum time on payside activity and minimum time on nonpayside activity.
• You do not need it. You only want it.
• No saving. You cannot save the adversary.
• Only one person in a negotiation can feel okay. That person is the adversary.
• All action—all decision—begins with vision. Without vision, there is no action.
• Always show respect to the blocker.
• All agreements must be clarified point by point and sealed three times (using 3+).
• The clearer the picture of pain, the easier the decision-making process.
• The value of the negotiation increases by multiples as time, energy, money, and emotion are spent.
• No talking.
• Let the adversary save face at all times.
• The greatest presentation you will ever give is the one your adversary will never see.
• A negotiation is only over when we want it to be over.
• “No” is good, “yes” is bad, “maybe” is worse.
• Absolutely no closing.
• Dance with the tiger.
• Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness (Emerson).
• Paint the pain.
• Mission and purpose drive everything.
• Decisions are 100 percent emotional.
• Interrogative-led questions drive vision.
• Nurture.
• No assumptions. No expectations. Only blank slate.
• Who are the decision makers? Do you know all of them?
• Pay forward.
Camp's biggest Negotiating Mistake
Once widely considered “The World’s Most Feared Negotiator,” Jim Camp easily recalled his biggest negotiating mistake of his career.
Camp, a former Ohio State football player under the legendary Coach Woody Hayes, was back in Columbus over the holidays—he puts it around 1971 or 1972—and went to visit Coach Hayes.
“Let’s go to lunch, Jim,” said Coach Hayes.
“Okay Coach, let’s go,” said Camp and Hayes took him to Len Immke’s Buick in downtown Columbus, a car dealership with a restaurant inside.
“Now it’s December, it’s cold, and we’re standing outside in a line of people around the block,” recalled Camp.
Inside, it was a basic restaurant, but a “real jovial big guy with a white apron in there flipping hamburgers” was making most of the burgers for take-away. Camp gets his burger and sits down with Coach—likely the most noticeable man in Ohio—and the fellow with the white apron comes over to chat.
Coach Hayes told the “jovial big guy” that Camp was a former ballplayer of his and about to come off active duty in the military as a jet fighter pilot, and when he did, he was going to California to get started with business.
“Jim, I’d love to have a young man like you in the organization,” said the hamburger man, who was in the process of building about 40 more of these restaurants around the country. “Why don’t you get $80,000 together and I’ll sell you the franchise for California?”
At the time, Camp’s military pay was $5,500 per year. He couldn’t figure out how he was going to come up with $80,000!
Camp said that, at the time, he didn’t have the breadth or thought process to think about “who can I get to join in with me?” or “how can I do this?”
Instead, he settled for the, “Gee, I can’t do that…” approach and thanked the man in the white apron, who continued the negotiation.
“Well, if you can get that together, I can teach you how to do this.” But the young Camp lacked vision on how to syndicate capital. He had no mentors who could help him out, either.
“I didn’t have the skill,” Camp remembered. “I didn’t have the fortitude to go to the banks or to anyone else or to bring a group of people together.”
Camp figured if he couldn’t see it, his mentors couldn’t see it either. For his great mentor Woody Hayes was a football man, not a business man.
But as a last shot, Camp asked his father for the money. His dad laughed.
“You’ve got to be kidding. Our whole estate is not worth $80,000.”
Camp also said that because of all the other fast-food chains popping up at the time, that his father was “absolutely convinced that there was absolutely no future in hamburgers.”
Well, the jovial big guy in the white apron was Dave Thomas. The franchise opportunity was for Wendy’s Hamburgers for all of California. Could’ve been Camp’s for just $80k.
The franchise sold three years later for $53 million!
Meanwhile, Len Immke, the dealership owner, put together a group of investors who bought up the franchise rights for over 15 other states.
Wendy’s is now, of course, a household name. They also have a strong Twitter game … https://twitter.com/Wendys
