The Building Blocks of Modern Negotiation - Tim Castle on Sales Reinvented Podcast
- Tim Castle
- Oct 9
- 10 min read
The below was originally posted on https://salesreinvented.com/episode-463-tim-castle/
My guest this week is negotiation futurist, bestselling author, and top-ranked negotiation expert Tim Castle. Tim is the founder of Negotiators Edge Training Academy and author of “The Art of Negotiation” and “The Momentum Sales Model.”
Tim shares his most effective approaches to high-stakes negotiation, focusing on value creation, building trust, and leveraging the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). He also reveals his favorite negotiation tactics, including creating urgency, holding firm with clarity, and operating from a mindset of abundance (not needing the deal).
We also discuss the critical role of planning, how AI tools can supercharge your preparation, and why emotional intelligence is every modern negotiator’s secret weapon.
Outline of This Episode
[04:11] Understand BATNA to leverage deals by controlling emotions and fostering collaboration without appearing manipulative.
[07:08] Be creative and clear in negotiation; hold firm on your value to persuade and influence effectively.
[11:49] Use AI to research and prepare by understanding counterparts’ backstories, challenges, and market trends.
[14:48] Crystal is an AI tool that analyzes LinkedIn profiles to predict communication styles and offers tips for effective interaction.
[17:58] Consistent integrity and champion-led negotiation empower internal advocates to overcome organizational hurdles and drive deals forward.
[20:34] Guide clients through open questions to uncover pain points collaboratively, ensuring they buy into the process and solutions.
[28:30] Value-based positioning and champion-led negotiation ensure long-term collaboration and significant value creation.
[30:14] Strategy gets you in; tactics let you own the situation. Maintain a winning mindset to achieve the best outcomes.
The Missing Link in Sales Success
Strategies are the big-picture, macro game plans: they define your end-goal, set your direction, and inform every subsequent decision. As Tim puts it, “Strategy is where you want to go, your desired outcome.” Maybe it’s nurturing a long-term partnership, building a multi-phase offering, or expanding the pie in an integrative negotiation.
Tactics, on the other hand, are your in-the-moment moves. They’re the practical tools—like anchoring price, mirroring, labeling, or using the “give-get” concession model—that support your strategy and help you adapt as the conversation unfolds. The magic, Tim explains, happens when you intentionally align your tactics with your overarching strategy, rather than just reacting or trying to “win” the moment.
The Heart of Effective Negotiation
At the core of Tim’s approach is the idea that negotiation isn’t about extraction—it’s about value creation. The whole goal of negotiation is about value creation, he emphasizes. Instead of distributive “win-lose” thinking, Tim advocates for integrative negotiation, which seeks to expand the pie and foster collaboration for mutual gain.
Knowing your BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) is essential here. When you’re clear on your alternatives, you can negotiate free from neediness and emotional intensity, giving you the space to truly listen, build trust, and co-create solutions with your counterpart.
Trust-building is Tim’s “single biggest competitive advantage” in an AI-driven world. Even as automation and scripts proliferate, genuine human connection and credibility remain irreplaceable.
Tim’s Favorite Tactics
Tim shared his top tactics, each rooted in psychology and practical experience:
Creating Urgency: By making your offer time-sensitive, you amplify its perceived value, countering commoditization and focusing the buyer’s attention.
Not Needing the Deal: When you approach negotiations from a place of abundance (thanks to a healthy sales funnel), you have the flexibility to be creative, collaborative, and less reactive, leading to better deals and relationships.
Clarity and Holding Firm: Clearly communicating your value and holding firm helps set boundaries, project confidence, and persuade the buyer of your worth.
Vision of the Future (Bonus): Focus on positive, long-term outcomes to keep the conversation optimistic and to reduce emotional tension.
The Power of AI and Human EQ
Preparation is a non-negotiable for high-stakes deals. Tim recommends leveraging AI to research your counterpart’s background, understand market forces, and tailor your approach. Tools like DISC profiling—and platforms like Crystal Knows—can help you anticipate behavioral styles and communicate more effectively. Tim also emphasizes role-playing and exposure therapy as ways to build comfort and resilience when stakes (and emotions) run high. Ultimately, fusing AI with emotional intelligence (EQ) is a winning combination for modern negotiators.
Resources & People Mentioned
Connect with Tim Castle
Connect With Paul Watts
Audio Production and Show notes by PODCAST FAST TRACK https://www.podcastfasttrack.com
Learn More About Tim Castle
What was a pivotal moment in your career that shaped your approach to negotiation, and how did it influence your strategy and tactics?
During my time in corporate barter in both the UK and Australia I was exposed to highly skilled negotiators daily, I learned from the best in the business how to create value and generate commercially beneficial outcomes in high stakes negotiations.
At the time barter wasn’t always everyone’s cup of tea, especially the publishers who needed to understand the incrementality that a barter company was bringing to the table. It had a poor reputation due to other companies and short term tactics. The company I worked for changed all of that and transformed the industry for good. This was because they could genuinely expand marketing budgets using goods and services that were a debt on a company’s balance sheet and turn them into media dollars, expanding the pie on both sides.
Witnessing how to negotiate at scale and during these times was a turning point for me, it taught me the importance of network and integrity, of remaining calm under pressure and being the expert in the room.
It was this experience combined with my natural flare for negotiation that made work feel like play. I was negotiating by day and helping friends and family out of contracts, bills, deal making for them by night.
This transformed how I saw the purpose of negotiation and it was at the culmination of this journey that I decided to write The Art of Negotiation, a book to help expand the pie in everyday negotiations and get what you want every time.
I took the skills I had learned and put them into an easy to read guide for anyone to upskill in negotiation. I saw how much value people were leaving on the table during their daily negotiations, for example, with a landlord, a telephone company, an insurance agent, people weren’t sure they could get a deal and they couldn’t believe the results you can get when you go for it.
My advice to people is – “ask for things you don’t think you can get.”
Train yourself to experience more rejection, this toughens your mental approach when it occurs, this process is called exposure therapy. By constantly exposing yourself to new situations where you can get rejected you experience growth and as result don’t panic when the rejection occurs. Instead, you have the composure and confidence to stay with it, to ask more questions and push a little hard as to why. This changes the conversation and the results entirely. Now you are working to create the deal, to pull what you want into your orbit. Life has a funny way of rewarding those who don’t quit, who keep standing up after they have gotten knocked down.
Can you share a specific negotiation tactic that has consistently helped you close deals more effectively? Please provide an example where it worked.
The way to influence is to find out what the other person wants and give it to them. The way to do this is to build trust. You need to make the journey about them and not you. Timing is also important.
My advice when negotiating is to rarely concede but when you do, make trades, if you give something up, make sure it is traded for something else. This is what greases the wheels and stops you getting pushed around, it also increases respect.
The other thing to do is to offer more in value than you are taking in monetary value. You need to structure the deal in terms of what it gives them and how this aligns with their motivations, desires, goals and KPIs. This turns the deal into an incentive based on the outcomes you will deliver, its about ROI and possibility not cost. This is a value based negotiation.
Be clear, don’t dilly dally, if the deal needs to be structured a certain way call it out, talk about your BATNA, for example if the client is going to go to someone else if they can’t do the deal let them know, this is your leverage, be clear about it, and then help them get what they need. Be the trusted advisor not the bad guy. The person they call when they want value.
What is the most challenging negotiation you’ve ever faced, and what strategy or tactic helped you turn it into a win?
I cover it in my book The Art of Negotiation, but talking my way into Goldsmiths College, University of London into the second year of the oversubscribed Psychology course without any formal application two days before the course started stands out as a big win.
To make it happen I needed to get the ‘gate keepers’ AKA the faculty receptionists on side and start rooting for me. They had to believe it was possible to become invested. Therefore I had to break it down into small chunks and paint the vision of a better future. At first when I phoned up they laughed and told me it wasn’t possible, as you can imagine, there is an application process that takes place 9 months before and now all the places had been allocated and they even had 6 people on the waitlist. Instead of reacting to their dismissal of my request, I asked them to image what I would need if I was to make it happen. They then proceeded to visualise the possibility and walked me through the documents, statements, interviews, phone calls, references, and everything else I would need to do to have any chance of being entertained for this request.
I brought them along on the journey as I got the pieces of the puzzle together. I kept them informed and in turn I kept them invested. Little by little they could see the picture forming, and they became more excited about the possibility and engaged. They could see I wasn’t going to stop, they could see my resilience and purpose was to make it happen.
I had inspired them with a vision of the future and now I was bringing it to life and they were part of it. I was reliable and delivered on my promises. I was capable because I had what I needed and I was transparent because I called them up throughout the day to let them know where I was at with the process, this improves the trust and shared experience. It humanised the negotiation and made them feel connected to the mission.
After 48 hours of struggle, I appeared in London and walked into the lecture theatre not knowing if I had a spot. The course was starting that day and I had just created magic, through vision and steadfast belief I had created the possibility and got myself on to the course despite challenges.
What are your top three must-have tools, frameworks, or resources that sales professionals should use to improve their negotiation skills?
The Momentum Sales Model by Tim Castle.
The ability to create MOMENTUM is key to all sales people. The momentum sales model stands for Mindset, Opportunity, Motivation, Energy, Nailing the pitch, Time Management, Understanding and More. Momentum is everything in sales. Get free sales resources here https://www.timjscastle.com/themomentumsalesmodel
“Top salespeople are more in demand than ever, they’re the lifeblood of any organization. I’ll show you how to fall in love with sales and enjoy the process in a way that see’s you overachieve targets and unleash an inner confidence that allows you to become more than you ever imagined.”
Use silence as a weapon – silence should be ultised much more in negotiations than it currently is. Strategic use of silences helps you to slow down the pace of the negotiation, diffuse pressure, breakthrough the tension of ultimatums, keep your counter party talking and revealing new information and take control of the negotiation.
MAGIC – Covered in my latest book The First Domino, the MAGIC Framework stands for Make connections everywhere you go, Add value, Give willingly, Inspire others growth and Collaborate. https://www.thefirstdominobook.com/ and grab a copy here https://a.co/d/dhco1FC
With buyer behaviors evolving and AI playing a larger role in sales, how do you see negotiation strategies and tactics changing in the future? What should sales professionals do to stay ahead?
The bottom line is negotiators not leveraging AI will be replaced by those using AI. This is inevitable, but the key distinction is how you use AI. Those using it to replace their own skills will fail over the long term. Those using it as a hybrid intelligence, where they also upskill and develop their ability to build trust, influence and persuade will be the most dangerous and sought after. It’s just as important that you upskill the human as it is getting the right information at speed from AI. There is no point having all the knowledge but not having the skills to apply it tactically.
This is where empathy led negotiation skills come into it. The ability to reduce conflict, communicate with clarity, understand with integrity and build trust across countries, communities and cultures is paramount.
By getting ahead today you hone your edge. AI is evolving exponentially, currently the IQ of Open AI is 135. However in a few months it will be more intelligent than any human on the planet in every subject. It is like having access to a mastermind group of polymaths at your fingertips and available 24/7. The goal here is to make you more effective by using AI to train yourself on the habits such as negotiation preparation, negotiation strategy and emotional intelligence. It is not to outsource the actual process of negotiation but instead enhance it through hybrid intelligence and in turn coach you how to be a better negotiator.
What’s are some simple but powerful negotiation tactics that most salespeople overlook?
Be present
Be calm
Be self aware
Be prepared
Talk in ranges
Be informed
Anchor high
Engage reciprocity
Slow down
Give willingly
Trade concessions
Use AI to expand your creativity and value adds
Get into circles where you feel behind the curve
Create value by adding value without the need for anything in return
Mindset and energy is everything
Be possibility minded
Your resilience will make you lucky
Empathy led responses to objections
Go the extra mile
Believe it is possible
Comments