Prepare a Negotiation One Sheet— “Never Split the Difference” Appendix

5 min readSep 17, 2024

Negotiation serves two primary purposes:

To gather information
To influence behavior

And as Chris Voss brilliant states

When the pressure is on, you don’t rise to the occasion — you fall to your highest level of preparation.

This post covers the appendix from Chris Voss’ “Never Split the Difference” book. Specifically, this covers the key points enumerated by Chris to prepare for a negotiation — a negotiation one sheet as he calls it.

This is not a script to read verbatim during the conversation, no no no. Rather, think of these as guidelines for what you want and plan to say to the person sitting across from you. Remember, negotiation is emotional, people will react in different ways depending on how their day is going or your tone of voice.

You have to remain mentally agile during the exchange and deploy plenty of empathy — not sympathy! And remember, no matter what gets (verbally) thrown at you, the other person is not the issue — the issue is whatever problem you want or need to solve with collaboration from the other person.

And so this sheet is purely a way for you to have a few aces up your sleeve if things are going well and even some baseline points to fall back on if things go south.

Section 1: The Goal

Think of best and worst-case scenarios but only write the specific goal that represents the best case.

By being aware of the full spectrum you become mentally prepared for anything: you know what is unacceptable for you, but also what looks like having the cake and eating it too.

Just keep in mind because you are going into the negotiation to find new information, you might even find something better or worse than you anticipated. Again, you go in prepared but mentally agile for the reality you find on the table.

And finally the reasoning behind only writing the best case goal is that it makes you aim upwards. You are not bracing yourself for a “loss”, rather aiming to get the best result you can. Follow these four steps to design your goal:

Set an optimistic, but reasonable goal, and define it clearly
Write it down
Discuss the goal to a colleague to make it more concrete and more difficult for you to wimp out
Carry the written goal into the negotiation

Section 2: Summary

Summarize in a couple sentences the known facts that have led up to the negotiation.

You need something beyond your personal goals to talk about during the exchange. Never forget that you must be prepared to respond with tactical empathy so when the other person talks about their own arguments you need to listen and reply appropriately.

For the summary, consider questions like

Why am I here?
What do I want?
What do they want?
And why?

And by the way, as part of using tactical empathy during the exchange, responding with a summary of your counterpart’s arguments will really win them over, especially if you get them to answer with “that’s right”. At that point you are assured you have a common vision of their perspective, they feel heard, and you can continue a smoother conversation.

Section 3: Labels & Accusation Audit

Prepare three to five labels to build your accusation audit — to be clear the accusation about yourself, not to point fingers at the other person.

Anticipate how your counterpart will feel about the facts you summarized beforehand once you sit down face to face. You can use the templated sentences provided by Chris as a starting point:

It seems like … is valuable to you
It seems like you don’t like ….
It seems like you value …
It seems like … makes it easier
It seems like you’re reluctant to …

Leading the conversation with this an accusation audit works wonders to surface doubts and fears on their mind and get them resolved straight away.

Bonus points if the accusation audit shines a negative light on you and they voluntarily defend you — “It probably sounds like I am self-centered with pushing my ideas” will almost certainly get them to step in and at least provide some justification about your ideas.

Section 4: Calibrated Questions

Prepare three to five calibrated questions that reveal value to both you and your counterpart. Moreover, these questions should identify and overcome potential deal killers.

An effective negotiator will see beyond the literal words said by their counterpart and delve into their underlying motivations. That is their true endgame.

See a few sample questions below:

What are we trying to accomplish?
How is that worthwhile?
What’s the core issue here?
How does that affect things?
What’s the biggest challenge you face?
How does this fit into the objective?

Questions to identify behind-the-table deal killers

When implementation happens by committee, i.e. the true influencers are not even sitting at the table, their support is key. Your calibrated questions can help to identify this group. More sample questions provided below:

How does this affect the rest of your team?
How on board are the people not on this call?
What do your colleagues see as their main challenges in this area?

Questions to identify and diffuse deal-killing issues

Negotiations will often hinge on nonmonetary aspects, things like self-esteem, status, and autonomy. Think about the perceived losses of the negotiation. Never forget a loss hits at least twice as hard as an equivalent gain for the human mind.

Section 5: Noncash offers

Putting money aside, you should make a list of noncash items your counterpart has and can be valuable for you. In the midst of the negotiation, they can almost seem free to your counterpart, but for you they are great value.

Closing Thoughts

To recap, your one sheet of preparation going into the negotiation should cover:

Your best case goal
A summary of the known facts leading into the negotiation
Three to five pre-designed labels
Three to five pre-designed calibrated questions
A list of noncash items of value to you held by your counterpart

And always remember, these are purely preparation. In the midst of the negotiation, always deploy tactical empathy and remain mentally agile.