The Art of Negotiation

"A milestone of success studies—a masterwork you must not miss in life!" An unmatched fine book passionately recommended by the Sewer Gazette editors, business elites, and scholars of the Akademiya of Sumeru! It teaches you to see through the abyss called "human nature," and achieve incomparable great works!

People often say I am skilled at business, at finding and seizing opportunity. I do not see it that way. I believe opportunity is created. My starting point was low; I had no capital. The only thing I could rely on was myself. Through negotiation I could persuade those with higher starts to work with me; through negotiation I could also manufacture opportunity.

All experience has told me one thing: negotiation can solve the great majority of problems. This is my only support—and for that very reason I hope you will not do as I say. Otherwise I will face a world even more impassable for me.

...

[Seize the First Word]

I believe many negotiations can be won or lost at first meeting. Those who know me know I once worked as a traveling merchant in the desert. That was the starting point of my career; at the time I was penniless and had little achievement in trade. But there I learned an important lesson: "Speak loudly, and give people a sense of solid confidence."

For the desert is a place that rejects outsiders. They only trade with those they can trust; they fear outsiders—or rather, they fear deception. But where would a poor boy who started from nothing get endorsements? Later I understood: desert tribes' exclusion of outsiders is only the surface. What is the essence? They know they have no power to guarantee the reliability of foreign goods.

Clearly in that situation they need you to provide strong proof to win their trust. Or you can make them believe you have strong proof. So how do you make people believe you have proof? Through the confidence in your speech—even if it is bluster. As long as you have confidence, others think you have capital, and they hypnotize themselves into thinking you can be trusted.

So I had to be loud—loud in hawking, loud in rebuke. Once they were overpowered in presence, they began to think: why does this person dare speak this way? Surely because he does not lack buyers; he does not care. Then his goods must be fine, his reputation excellent. Buying from him cannot go wrong.

What happened later we all know: I earned my first bucket of gold.

Looking back, the aim of negotiation is often to make others accept or agree with what you put out. If you seize the first word and overpower the opponent in presence so that he is won over—then is not our aim of negotiation easily reached?

...

[Guiding the Topic]

In my view, topic guidance is a highly efficient negotiation method, often a reliable means of opening a difficult situation.

I once wanted to sell Mondstadt goods in Liyue. But my customer base at the time did not know Mondstadt; many were ordinary people who had never left Liyue in their lives. For such customers, buying goods they did not understand was dangerous, so sales did not go smoothly. Naturally my sponsor had little confidence either.

The problem looked thorny, but the solution was simple. For customers: tell them Mondstadt is a good place; make them feel goodwill toward the source region, even trust. That trust would transfer to the products and finally create performance for us. And the sponsor? Simpler still—he lacked confidence, so give him confidence. Make him believe sales would go well. Whether sales would truly go well did not matter in itself.

Once the root was found, the solution was nearly ready. To avoid making the means of solving the problem too obvious, I chose to run a market survey. It was a questionnaire; in it I advertised that participants would have a chance to obtain Mora. At the mere sound of Mora, people flocked.

So the question arises: what has this to do with negotiation techniques? I can answer thus: the strongest weapon of negotiation is fact. And fact can be manipulated by human hands. This questionnaire looked like research, but in truth it guided the topic, steering everyone toward a conclusion you wanted.

What followed developed thus: I set questions in the questionnaire to guide thought. For example, I analyzed that Mondstadt's label is freedom, while Liyue people's need is generally a peaceful, happy life. So I had to make people reach a conclusion: freedom and a peaceful, happy life are necessarily linked.

Thus questions like these appeared:

For instance, whether you like an easy, slow-paced life; whether you like a free atmosphere; whether you think fine wine benefits the seasoning of life, and so on.

Most people would give positive answers. Next we could tell them through the questionnaire that Mondstadt is just such a free and happy city-state—would you like such a city-state? Needless to ask, most of the answers we harvested were affirmative. By then they already had an impression: people of Mondstadt are happy.

In later promotion I could raise the banner that I was not selling goods, but a way of life—a way of life called happiness. Clearly, what followed readers can imagine.

Of course we also meet the rebellious sort who like to sing the opposite tune. These people pollute the data in the questionnaire and affect the confidence of those who see the results—namely the sponsor.

At that point I must eliminate or dilute that influence. The method I chose was crude and simple: imply to questionnaire participants that obtaining Mora was related to their answers. Faced with Mora's temptation, the great majority of troublemakers would choose compromise. Thus the purity of the data was ensured, and the sponsor's fragile confidence could be maintained. The plan could then advance to the next stage.

...

[The Universal Formula]

Someone always asks me whether there is a one-hit negotiation technique that always wins. I tell him there is, then choose this sentence as the answer: "I agree with your view, but..." I call this sentence the universal formula. For no other reason than that it is a formula for parsing and using human nature; human weakness lies bare before it.

Why? Because people yearn for recognition; no one is free of it—not even I. I once traveled everywhere as a merchant. In that time I met all sorts of people: the Eremites, Treasure Hoarders, even the Abyss Order. Even Abyss Mages, famous for stubbornness and trouble, would rethink and seek common ground with me when I threw out this sentence.

I dare assert: if I could master the language of Slimes or Hilichurls, they too would yield to the magic of this sentence. Therefore I do not wish everyone to learn it—especially not my competitors.

...