Real Estate Negotiation Skills That Actually Close Deals (People Over Price)

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In this conversation, negotiation expert Derrick Chevalier discusses the importance of strong negotiation skills, particularly in real estate. He emphasizes focusing on the human element of negotiation rather than viewing it as purely transactional. The discussion explores whether negotiation skills are innate or learned, the balance between deal volume and relationship-building, common negotiation mistakes, and how negotiation plays a role in everyday life. Derrick also shares resources for improving negotiation skills, including his book, Evolve or Be Slaughtered.

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Derrick Chevalier (00:00)
Absolutely. So here is our two principles that we talk about in the evolved negotiation framework. And that is negotiate people, not problems or challenges. So what happens in real estate, because real estate itself is transactional. It’s an exchange of dollars and cents for something. But the process of investing in negotiation is not or shouldn’t be

a transactional because you’re dealing with a human being. The human being is not the dollars and cents. So you want to separate the dollars and cents and the transaction from the person who’s making the decisions around the transaction. And that’s the human being.

Dylan Silver (02:20)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Derrick Chevalier, is a negotiation expert, California real estate investor, consultant, and trainer. You can find him on LinkedIn and also on his website, h-c.com. Derrick, thank you for taking the time today.

Derrick Chevalier (02:37)
Well, thank you for the invitation. I’m excited to talk with you and to share with your guests. Thank you for having me on.

Dylan Silver (02:44)
When we talk about negotiation, really nothing could be more important than negotiation skills, especially for ⁓ newer investors, especially for single family home investors. And sometimes this gets glossed over because people think you just can knock enough doors, make enough calls, send enough mailers. But having been in these rooms, having sat down at the kitchen tables with people,

in some very distressing situations. That could be someone losing their home, foreclosure, could be a death in the family, it could be divorce, it could be family fighting over property. And then here comes me, a wholesaler or an investor, and I have to try to come and make sense of the situation while also, of course, looking for a deal. And so these kind high stakes conversations are really where money is made and where deals happen.

Derrick Chevalier (03:40)
Absolutely. So here is our two principles that we talk about in the evolved negotiation framework. And that is negotiate people, not problems or challenges. So what happens in real estate, because real estate itself is transactional. It’s an exchange of dollars and cents for something. But the process of investing in negotiation is not or shouldn’t be

a transactional because you’re dealing with a human being. The human being is not the dollars and cents. So you want to separate the dollars and cents and the transaction from the person who’s making the decisions around the transaction. And that’s the human being.

So if you’re talking about negotiating people, the first person that you’re the first thing that we’re connecting with are with the human beings. And then what we want to do is understand.

Are we dealing with someone who is going to be influenced or impacted more by the pain points that they’re feeling? You mentioned divorce or they’re losing their property. So it may be pain points that I want to focus on that I can relieve for them. And again, in real estate investing, everybody’s talking about pain points.

Well, we come along and say, well, yeah, but there’s another side of that. There are some people who are in so much pain. They can’t hear you. And what they need to hear about are the benefits of whatever deal you’re offering. So now what I’m doing is I’m thinking, ⁓ I need to focus on the benefits of, of the transaction that I am offering or willing to be engaged with, with, these.

Dylan Silver (05:15)
Yeah.

Derrick Chevalier (05:33)
⁓ people. So we want to negotiate people first and not problems or challenges.

Dylan Silver (06:29)
Now when we talk specifically about the type of person that is going to be successful at this, what typically gets priest is, hey, you got to work hard. You know, got to be consistent. You got to follow up. But I don’t often hear like, hey, you got to have some type of maybe personal aptitude and capacity to handle these conversations. But I’ve personally seen it. I’ve seen people who are like naturals and they’re not necessarily real estate guys or gals, but they can just kind of hang in the pot.

it, sit back and listen, very astutely analyze who the players are in a discussion. And it might not be the person with the money, ironically, it might just be the person who is kind of the voice of reason within a family. They might not even be on the title of the home, but you’ve got to get their permission to go forward.

In real estate negotiations specifically, do you think that some of this is like maybe genetic or like nature versus nurture? Or can anyone learn to be a great negotiator?

Derrick Chevalier (07:30)
So yes, to everything that you said, there are people that have innate skills whose demeanor and whose physical presence are such that people are drawn to them. And for those people, they don’t need to read a book. They don’t need to be told how to do it. It happens for them. The door’s open. If you’re that person, I wouldn’t change anything. If you’re not that person,

⁓ then the antidote is skill. So ultimately, depending on your own demeanor and depending on your own background, if you want to be successful in real estate, negotiation is what you’re doing. That is what it is. The entire, ⁓ sector is negotiation, whether it’s the paperwork and the transaction, or it’s the decision that gets you into the paperwork in the transition. So yes.

I think that skill is the common denominator and anyone can improve their skill depending on how much on their learning style and on how much they’re willing to actually focus. the last thing I’ll say about this is that part of the problem today is that if you go online, there are 10,000 gurus who are telling you which direction to go.

So what happens to young investors or even experienced investors, they’ll take a tidbit from here and a tidbit from there and a tidbit from there and a tidbit from there. And what they end up with is a hodgepodge that doesn’t actually add up to any kind of actual skill. They just have a lot of independent tactics and strategies that they throw at the board. I suggest that people actually

commit to learning a framework of negotiation, utilize it, make money with it, fail with it, succeed with it, learn it, and then add to that and develop their own style over a period of time.

Dylan Silver (09:43)
Now, when you mentioned having your own style, ⁓

there’s going to be some people who think, well, you know, I’m not a natural at this. You know, I have to kind of fake it till I make it type of thing. Can people tailor negotiation strategy to their personality? Or let’s say if someone likes to, you know, is a chatty Cathy, right, and just really likes to talk and talk and talk and maybe their skill isn’t listening, would they have to almost eliminate that portion of themselves completely?

Derrick Chevalier (10:50)
So that’s a great question. So if you’re a Chatticathie and you don’t have skill, that’s pretty simple. Talk to people who respond to Chatticathie. So your objective there would simply be to isolate whether or not you’re speaking to someone who is open to a Chatticathie ⁓ verbal person, right?

If you have a couple of tools, you can find out just by looking at somebody’s eyes or whether or not they’re paying attention or if there’s a synergy there pretty quickly. If there isn’t and you’re not willing to utilize and extend your skill, walk away and go find somebody that is. So that’s the simplest straight line. Talk to the people who are naturally open to your style. But what that does,

Is it means now that instead of being able to find a potential prospect ⁓ or a potential deal out of one out of 10 deals, you’re going to be looking for one out of 30 deals. So the more people that you can respond to and adjust to what you want to do is cut that prospect to deal ratio from, you know, from one in 10 or one in 20.

Dylan Silver (11:58)
Yeah.

Derrick Chevalier (12:11)
to three or four in 10 or five and six in 20. And that’s gonna increase your success ratio. So the amount of skill that you have opens up the number of adjustments that you can make that allow you to interact and be successful with more people, which means that you can do more transactions.

Dylan Silver (12:34)
Now.

There’s kind of this idea that I’ve seen in wholesale specifically, and I don’t know if this is changing, and it might not change, and I’ve done it myself, so I can’t exactly say that this is a bad thing or a good thing, but it’s basically make a bunch of offers, make 100 offers, and they might be lower than market value, but one’s gonna stick. And part of that is this idea of just in mass, you’ll get one. In volume, you’ll find one. But then there’s also another approach

which is more, I would say more people-centric and less volume-based, which is, hey, I’m gonna go knock on some doors, build rapport with these people, follow up with them, get to the kitchen table, ⁓ and ultimately find a deal that way. Now, one of the challenges that I think a lot of people face is you almost feel like you have to pick one, right? Because if you’re making 100 offers, that’s a full-time job. If you’re knocking doors and building these

these

relationships that that is one you know full-time job entirely to it can feel like do you feel like people can you know work in in both worlds or if you’re gonna go with like the volume approach and more just like strictly numbers based that you should stick with that versus you know oscillating between being heavy you know people and relational base versus just being numbers focus

Derrick Chevalier (14:01)
Great question again. The answer is look at your resources. If you’re taking a long-term approach, which is knocking on doors and developing relationships, that takes time. So you know that you’re not gonna go out and knock on doors and build a relationship in 24 hours. It may not happen in six months. It may not happen in a year. So if you’re in the longer you’re in the game,

You knocked on a door three years ago, suddenly somebody’s in a circumstance where they need help. And because you’ve maintained some kind of contact with them, you’re the one that they turn to. Well, okay. So if you’re not doing anything else within the period between when you started knocking on that door and developing that relationship and the three years later, when they are in a position to need you, then you’re not going to be available because you’ll be out of business.

So you’re going to want to do both of those things and other things. And the technology today is allowing us to do that. So that we want that one-on-one personal contact people, but we also want to utilize AI tools, which make it possible to prospect on a broad area on autopilot.

And that an AI is only just beginning to deliver the capability. So going forward, you’re not going to have a choice because you won’t be able to compete in the field against people that are utilizing those tools. So you need to learn the tools and then you need to have a process that you are investing both one-on-one as well as prospecting on a broader.

a broader area so that you’re hitting, you know, throwing that stuff against the wall for the one that’s going to stick.

Dylan Silver (16:40)
You know, the negotiation space in general is something that I’ve been very interested in for a handful of years. I read Chris Voss’s book, Never Split the Difference. I loved that book. And one of the things that stuck out to me, and we talked about this at the show here today, is, you know, people can learn some, like…

Basic skills, you know like radio FM DJ voice, you know this kind of low low and slow You know, you can you can start to do strategic like logistical things to to enhance your negotiation ability but there’s also a lot of noise out there and you mentioned this Derrick where you know, there’s gonna be hundreds of people and So many different ways to go about it that part of it too is you get like death by a thousand paper cuts or what have you

When you’re teaching someone negotiation or when you’re working with someone who’s looking at becoming better at negotiation, what are some of the common mistakes that you see people making?

Derrick Chevalier (17:44)
Yes, first of all, people not understanding that every interaction is a negotiation. Yesterday, I was talking to an extremely successful executive in the insurance world. They’ve got one of the biggest agencies in the country, and they were talking about how the CEO of the national international company had flown out.

And I later asked him, said, well, how are you training your people in the area of negotiation? And he said, well, we don’t do much negotiation. goes, our pricing is dictated by state law or by our international policy. Now, ultimately here’s a very sophisticated person who doesn’t realize he was actually on a recruiting call.

When they reached out to me, they were really reaching out to find out whether or not I might be a prospect for recruiting. Now, if recruiting’s not a negotiation, what is? But here you have a very sophisticated person who’s only thinking about negotiation in transactional terms, not thinking about negotiation in terms of relationships and in terms of human beings, right?

So the first thing that people make is thinking that negotiation is not a part of every aspect of their interaction with other people. The second thing is that people are driven by their assumptions and by their presumptions, by their beliefs that they bring to the table. And then rather than testing those beliefs, they walk into a situation, make an offer, for instance,

make an assessment about a situation based upon their position. And that’s one of the things that happens for, ⁓ in negotiation where somebody believes like, this couple’s getting divorced. Things are really bad. Everything’s falling apart. So let me go in and low ball and provide a low ball offer because there may be open to that. Well, the deal may not have anything to do with the,

divorce or the financial situation because of the human dynamics between the players, as you said earlier. So if we understood the dynamics between the people, then we’re going to look to resolve that before we deal with the transaction. So the biggest mistake people make is trusting their own assumptions rather than asking appropriate questions.

And second of all, not understanding that negotiation is a fundamental part of every human interaction.

Dylan Silver (20:32)
Yeah, I mean, when once you start to see the. ⁓

dynamic, like the interpersonal, you social dynamics once, and then you see it in other areas of life. I’ve, ⁓ you know, had, and I’m sure you’ve had this experience, you you start to use this in all of your areas of life. And you know, you sometimes think, Hey, am I, are people going to realize that I’m using this now? And then you realize, no, you know, it’s just a part of life, right? So like, even, even when someone may be, you know, beholden to you, like if you’re trying to get good service at a restaurant, right?

You can start to see things through this kind of lens versus, you know, demanding and I’m gonna write a bad Yelp review. That’s one way that you can negotiate, you know, but there’s other subtle things that you could do too. It just bleeds into everything. We are coming up on time here though, Derrick. ⁓ Any new projects that you’re working on and then also what’s the best way for folks to get in contact with you or your team?

Derrick Chevalier (21:31)
Thanks so much for asking. Well, the first thing is go to our website h-c.com, but to get some in-depth answers to the questions and topics that we’ve been talking about, I really would encourage people to look on Amazon or go on any on the internet and look for my book, Evolve or Be Slaughtered, Negotiation for the 21st Century. That is an actual textbook.

that will give you step-by-step insights on how to build skill step at a time. And that can go from a simple transactional deal on a single family to multinational deals. It’s being used in politics and in government and all over the place. So it can be as sophisticated or as simple as you want to make it. And it’s a great place to start because it’s focused on the framework which allows

people to be able to build a style given their own attributes as they go out there. So that’s a big part. But I’ll also say this. We do offer a 30 minute, no cost, no obligation, uh, uh, consult for anybody on any issue. If you’ve got a deal going or you’re considering a deal, we’ll talk about it and we’ll provide some actionable steps that you can go out and give it a try.

When you see the results of that, you’ll, we don’t need to sell you. Your results will sell you. And, ⁓ because we’re first looking to provide value and then to create relationships where we can go a little deeper. So the website anywhere on the LinkedIn profile, if you want to see some of the, ⁓ podcasts and other things that we’ve done talking about different aspects and tools.

Dylan Silver (23:25)
Derrick, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thanks for taking the time.

Derrick Chevalier (23:29)
Thank you so much. It a great pleasure speaking with you. Thank you.

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Real Estate Negotiation Skills That Actually Close Deals (People Over Price)

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