So the property owner wants too much ground rent. What should you do? How about just telling them the truth? In this Billboard Mastery podcast we’re going to explore one of the most powerful negotiating tools you have at your disposal: telling the truth in the strongest possible fashion.
Episode 109: How Honesty Is A Strong Negotiating Tool Transcript
If you go to bookstores and look in the aisles dedicated to negotiation skills, you'll see all kinds of books by all kinds of people with all kinds of ideas. Some of them are good, some of them are not so good, but one that isn't expressed too much among those different volumes of negotiating tips is a simple one that's simply the power of raw honesty. This is Frank Rolfe from the Billboard Mastery Podcast. We're gonna talk about the power of just telling the truth, the power of getting your way by simply telling people what really is going on. Now, the first thing you have to remember is that most people, most landowners throughout America, they hate BS. We've just come off of several years, the past four years, which has had probably more BS than prior administrations in power in the US and people are just kind of sick of it all.
We just wanna know the true what's really going on, and if we don't hear that well, that we are prone to tune everything out and move on to a different source. So we're all searching right now for the truth. We're looking at social media, looking at articles online, and we're probably reading them from multiple sources hoping that the average between them might give us the truthful impression. And property owners are no different. They really just like honesty. They just wanna know what's really going on. And when you express yourself as though you are telling the truth and they believe you're telling the truth, then it's very powerful. So the first part of being a good negotiator using the truth is the optics that you are in fact truthful. So how do you achieve that? Well, it is typically in your manner of style, but also it's just the way you present yourself.
If you just tell the truth in every regard, many people when they meet a property owner, let's say you don't have any billboards, or only a few will try and puff themselves up into beating more than they truly are. Making claims of signs they don't have, or the fact they've been in business longer than they have, proper owners can figure that out from a mile away. So if you want people to believe you, then you have to be truly honest. And you'll also find that being truly honest does not really work against you. Most people enjoy the honesty. So feel free to express yourself. Also the fact that people appreciate honesty so much also means that, well, the way you express the truth is important. They wanna believe what you're saying. They want you to point out why factually what you're saying is in fact correct.
So if you were to say to a property owner, look, the sign can't go here, why not? Well, it can't go here 'cause there's trees in front of it. See the trees over there. And sometimes when you meet a property owner, you can't show them where the trees are 'cause they're not there. So often you want to give photographic evidence. We all believe things, a picture tells a 1000 words. We all believe things more when we can see them than when we just hear them. So often sometimes to use truthfulness in your negotiation also requires a little extra homework and proving it out on paper as to what you're saying.
So how do you then harness this power? How do you harness the power of of truth? Well, number one, and this is a big problem for some people, is just don't be afraid to tell the truth. People are afraid of offending people when you're meeting the property and they're out there and he's a big landowner and you're just got trying to build a billboard on it, and you don't wanna offend them. Most of those people like that, they love hearing the truth. You're not gonna offend them. You have a much greater risk of blowing the deal if you don't tell the truth than if you simply do. And when you tell people the truth, often do it in an inclusive manner. So how do you do that inclusively? Say things like, I don't think that this sign is going to work in this location because it's right in the middle of your driveway, don't you think?
What do you think? Is that a problem when you are inclusive and ask them for their opinion? It makes it work better, because then they also have to come up with what the truth would be. So if you said to the person, look, I've gotta have the sign taller. I know you wanna keep the sign low to the ground so as to be less offensive as far as the looks of your property, but you can see all these power lines in these trees here. I don't think anyone will be able to read the sign unless I go up to at least 30 feet in the air, which is the very top of those trees over there. But what do you think? Is there another alternative? What do you think? Maybe I'm wrong. And that typically elicits in them the response. No, no, I think you're right.
So being inclusive in negotiation has always been very powerful. And when you're telling the truth is no different, you wanna get them in there as well. Also, when you talk about the facts, you don't embellish them because again, for them to believe that you're telling the truth, they have to have no signs of corruptibility that in fact you're not telling the truth. So this goes back for your very first presentation to them of what you're trying to achieve, how much you're going to pay, et cetera. They wanna make sure that all of it lines up and that they can truly believe you as being someone who is fully moral and telling the truth that there's a million examples in life of situations where people negotiating told the truth and that took them to victory. You've probably even seen the movie Scarface with Al Pacino, where one of the scenes with the drug cartel leader, he suddenly tells the guy completely, honestly, why they can't sell whatever drug it was based on the fact that it was low quality or overpriced.
That's the kind of information that true decision makers want to hear. They don't like fluff, they don't like what we've been calling word salad for the last year or so. They just like being told how it truly is. And if you do that, if you present that in a manner which is fully truthful and they believe you, that in fact will be one of your strongest negotiation points. But the big takeaway is don't be afraid to use that one tool. Many people find that one item abhorrent, something they simply can't bring themselves to do, worried about offending the property owner. No, you're not gonna offend them if you tell the truth, you have a much better chance in fact of getting what you need. This is Frank Rolfe, the Billboard Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.