Sun Tzu – The Art of the War – Business Negotiation Tactics (1) – Attention Diversion Strategy
It’s not out of the realms of possibility that you might have heard about Sun Tzu before, the famed Ancient Chinese War Strategist who wrote an ancient book called The Art of the War.
One of his most famed strategies, called the “Attention Diversion” strategy, has been used to gain victory in countless wars. Interestingly, not a lot of negotiators that I know of have consciously employed this strategy in long, complex business negotiations. Although a seemingly easy strategy to explain, it does take a bit of time to become familiarized with the application of this strategy into business negotiations, which is exactly what we will be covering today.
First of all, why and how is the attention diversion strategy useful in business negotiations? Well, the main benefit of this strategy is it diverts your opponents’ attention into demanding concessions on things you deem little or even no value, which gives you the upper hand in negotiations without your opponent even realizing. To further explain this, we need to talk about the reciprocity principle. According to the reciprocity principle, humans are psychologically pressured to return favors. Same in negotiations. When you make a concession, your opponent is pressured to return a favor psychologically, so that it seems fair. Hence, the key to winning negotiations is to concede less than what your opponent. By employing the attention diversion strategy, your opponent will be tricked into demanding concessions from you that they feel are of great value to you, but in fact isn’t. After giving your opponent concessions deemed little to no value of you, you are then in a psychologically advantageous position, as allowed by the reciprocity principle, to then demand a larger concession from your opponent compared to yours. Sounds a bit complicated? At least that’s the theory explained and we will go into depth more later in this blog/video.
Let’s go through a possible use case of the attention diversion strategy. My favorite use case is providing less work for relatively more money. Let me give you an example. I am heavily involved in the property sourcing/investment consulting business, where clients pay me to find the best properties for them. I am able to charge high margins for this business, yet the caveat is that if clients are too demanding, it seriously affects the quality of work I can produce for other clients, which will undermine my reputation as a business. In other words, I am willing to sacrifice a bit of money in return for producing lesser work, so as to optimize my “income vs time spent” ratio. To employ the attention diversion strategy in this case, I create an impression for prospective clients where money is key for me. If they accept my offer upfront, great! But for the more demanding clients, they may make additional demands to the scope of work. Since my ultimate goal is not about money, but actually providing less work per client on average so as to not compromise my quality of work overall, I made sure I can get what I want by being seemingly reluctant to make a small concession on my service charge, but in return demanding that the scope of work included will be less. Hence, from the client’s point of view, it seemed that I made a huge concession but in fact, I got what I wanted. This is what I call “attention diversion” in negotiations.
Before reading on, feel free to read more about business negotiation tactics here from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2013/12/05/six-surprising-negotiation-tactics-that-get-you-the-best-deal/?sh=489472035976
Let’s talk about the historical background in which Sun Tzu came up with this famed strategy. Back in Ancient China’s Warring States period, around BC353, Hui, who is the King of the state of Wei, decided to invade it’s neighboring state Zhao. At that time, Zhao was facing a sure loss, since Wei’s army was much more powerful. In order to save itself, Zhao reached out to its neighboring state Qi, and promised to cede a part of its land to Qi if Qi managed to strike down Wei. Since Wei’s army is the most powerful of the three, the army general of Qi came up with the “Attention Diversion Strategy”, where they would attack Wei’s capital directly so as to divert the attention of Wei’s army from invading Zhao, and it worked. Qi correctly predicted that Wei’s army would react frantically to save its capital, which gave Zhao sufficient breathing space to defend its country. Wei lost its confidence and strategic advantage, leading to its ultimate failure. This is how Zhao managed to turn a sure loss into a small victory by employing the “Attention Diversion Strategy”.
The fable of this event is that being relatively weak on paper does not mean a sure loss, whilst being relatively stronger doesn’t mean one can afford to lose concentration. The states of Zhao and Qi were able to force Wei to divide its army to fight a 2-front war, which led to a lack of focus and an eventual defeat for Wei. Applying Sun Tzu’s “Attention Diversion Strategy” into business negotiations, you must remember a few things if you ever find yourself fighting a seemingly losing battle.
First of all, remember that negotiation strength and weakness are relative, and that they change gradually depending on which stage the negotiation is at, as well as the negotiation strategies and tactics employed by you and your opponent. I have seen countless negotiation battles lost by more superior parties due to under-researching their opponent, as well as employing wrong negotiation tactics such as making threats at the wrong times, similar to what the state of Wei did when contemplating whether to invade Zhao or not.
Secondly, as lame as it sounds, you must stay focused and have a never say die attitude even when fighting a losing battle. This is so that when the opportunity comes, that is when your opponent slips up, you are mentally in the right position to take advantage of that.
Thirdly, you must be creative and think of ways to trap your negotiation opponent. As I will share later in the blog/videos, I have been cornered many times as a startup entrepreneur by far more powerful opponents, yet I tried to gain leverage through creative means, which involved the use of the “attention diversion strategy”.
Ok, enough of the theory, let’s get into how I actually employed the “attention diversion strategy” in negotiations.
I will always remember my long winded negotiation with another startup founder, in particular how I managed to negotiate a great set of terms and conditions despite being in a weaker position. Let’s call this startup founder “Peter”. The reason we were stuck at a negotiation table together is because we both have similar relocation and property businesses, and we figured out it will be better if we merged our operations together for a win-win.
At that time when I started negotiations with Peter, I had only one fifth the customers he had, not to mention that he had far more business connections than me as a more experienced entrepreneur, including property developers, real estate agents etc. He was a smart guy as well and he could tell I did not have as many bargaining power as he had. As human nature dictates, he began offering partnership terms that would significantly benefit him more, such as entitling him to a two third split in any profit we make together, as well as demanding a much larger stake than I.
I figured out that I was going to be totally “murdered” by him had my negotiations continued the way it went, so the only option for me was to increase my leverage and make Peter feel that I actually have more power than he thought I had. I decided to employ the “attention diversion strategy” and brought in a second person into the negotiations with him, who was one of my most trusted contacts within the property sector. Let’s call this second contact “Bill”.
Now that Bill is negotiating with me as a team, instead of focusing on profits and ownership of our new venture, I forced Peter to listen to what Bill had to say about my track record as an entrepreneur and the amount of revenue I have brought in for Peter. Bill positioned himself as a business advisor for me and with both of our expertise and connections, Peter’s attention was diverted. Instead of asking for more profit split and ownership of the new firm, Peter was basically forced into a corner to accept my joint offer with Bill. Instead of only owning one third of the new venture as I was offered before, Peter and I would split the profit and each hold a stake of 50/50, whereas I will separately give Bill a consultancy fee from my pocket.
Looking back to this case, had Peter been more demanding and persisted with the original offer he gave me, I would have taken the initial offer since Peter’s connections are actually hugely beneficial to me. However, Peter’s attention got diverted when I introduced somebody new to the negotiations, which derailed his original negotiation strategy.
One of my other most successful negotiations to date, which involved the use of the “attention diversion strategy”, is my commercial negotiations with several independent schools in the UK, where I was negotiating for a higher retainer for the marketing services I was providing for them. The reason these schools wanted my help is because I could help them reach a larger overseas audience, so as to recruit more international students. Again, I was faced with a situation where the schools thought they have more financial power and leverage over me, and they did not shy away from repeatedly bringing up the fact that they had other options – they could choose from other marketing service providers.
Again, instead of convincing them that I had a lot of experience, connections, expertise, blah blah blah, I went into “attention diversion” mode immediately and shifted the negotiations’ focus to my own business worries. I intentionally showed vulnerability by mentioning that parents have more and more choices nowadays to choose from, and that it is getting hard to showcase our brand value and catching the parents’ attention without a larger budget. I then told them straight up that I could only work with schools that had a larger budget, otherwise it would be a lose-lose for both my firm and the school. I successfully got these schools to worry about my legit concern through showing vulnerability, whilst shifting away their focus from profit and money to something more emotional. I got them to value me as a person, instead of treating me as another business whose primary concern was profit.
Before continuing, feel free to check this great piece on negotiation tactics written by Harvard Law School: https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/batna/10-hardball-tactics-in-negotiation/
The lesson I think people can learn from this, is that hostile negotiations can turn into sessions of authentic sharing if we learn to divert attention. If you feel your opponent getting uptight, serious and defensive, divert their attention to talk about something else, make them treat you as a real person. Or basically, just do anything to get them to focus on the issues that you want them to focus on.
Negotiations are a psychological game of tug and war, and winners are often those who can get their opponent to understand their perspective the best. Negotiation winners never become too emotionally involved in negotiations, but rather, calculated thinkers who can strategize a way to shift their opponent’s focus away.
A major benefit of this “attention diversion strategy” is that you can get what you want in negotiations with minimal threats and confrontation. It is human nature to become more uptight when faced with threats, especially in business negotiations, and you risk derailing negotiations and even a business relationship by being confrontational. With this strategy, when employed correctly, you can even get your negotiation opponent to think from your perspective, giving you a better than expected negotiation outcome more times than not. It is also hard for your opponent to realize that you are using this slightly deceptive trick, unlike popular negotiation tactics like “good cop, bad cop”. In my experience, good negotiators can prevent opponents from overthinking and second guessing your motives but instead, genuinely feel that you are raising demands and negotiating in good faith, which is not difficult to do.
Enough of the positives, let’s take a look at some negatives. Although I’m tactically mindful in negotiations, it is important not to overthink. Only employ the attention diversion strategy if it gives you more leverage or an upper hand in negotiations. It is not easy to come up with perfect attention diversion strategy and it may not always work, that’s why I tend not to employ this tactic when I think I’m getting good enough terms in a negotiation. There’s no point prolonging negotiations unless absolutely necessary, and the longer a negotiation takes, the higher the chance that something unexpected happens.
Another challenge is the implementation of this strategy. To formalize a strategy to divert your opponent’s attention, you must first understand what your opponent is truly after in a negotiation. Skilled negotiators are great at hiding part of their motivations. It can take years of experience and countless negotiations to figure this out accurately. If you can’t truly understand what your opponent is after, you will have very little luck using this strategy. When implementing this strategy, the hard bit is to confidently articulate your demands and steer negotiations into another direction. Since many components are involved in formulizing such a strategy, you can easily confuse yourself when it comes to the implementation of this strategy. Failing to articulate what you want confidently can be interpreted as a sign of weakness by your opponent, which may spell further trouble in your attempt to take control of negotiation proceedings. You must be confident in what you are doing and follow through with what you have planned. Playing around with your opponent’s mind is not easy to do, not to mention that it can become unethical if you overdo it.
If you wish to employ this attention diversion strategy in future negotiations, our recommendation for you is to carefully analyze the negotiation stage you are at with your opponent, and clearly figure out the leverage each has over the other. If you feel that your opponent is getting tired of further negotiations, be careful of using this strategy, since again, prolonging negotiations are not usually the best thing to do unless you are certain you can gain an upper hand. In addition, if you don’t know what options your opponent has, and how he/she truly feels about how the negotiations are going, employing this strategy prematurely may not work and can cloud your judgment. Tactics are important in negotiations but do not overanalyze and over-strategize to point that even you become confused about what you are after. When employing this strategy, you must be 100% certain about your negotiation goal, and not become discouraged if your opponent does not seem to fall for your trick.
Hope this gives you a new perspective on negotiations. Stay tuned for more of these fascinating insights on negotiation tactics and strategies!
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