For the person being sold to
Nobody's Fool
How to Spot Manipulation Tactics in Negotiations, Job Interviews and Office Politics
The room where somebody is trying to win.
Hazel Crowe
About the book
You agreed to it at 11.38, with your coat already on.
A small thing, raised as everyone stood up. It sounded like admin. You said "fine, send it over", because you had been in that room for 96 minutes and you wanted to go. It cost more than everything you had argued about all morning.
If you negotiate contracts, sit on interview panels, take job offers or sit through sales pitches, this has happened to you. Nobody lied. The people across the table prepared, and you improvised.
Hazel Crowe spent 20 years on the buying side and never sold anything. She was the person the manipulation tactics were used on: the number that arrives before the facts, the third option that exists to make the second look reasonable, the deadline with a date and no reason, the item reopened as everyone stands up.
Nobody's Fool takes those tactics one chapter at a time: what each feels like from your chair, where you will meet it, and the one thing to do when you notice. Then it walks through the interview from both chairs, the negotiation in order, the pitch, and one 96-minute meeting in full. Nothing in it teaches you to do any of this to anyone else.
How it fits the set
Nobody's Fool is the book for negotiations and job offers. When the hard conversation is with someone on your own team, Five Ways of Looking at a Person is the one to read next. For the interview from the panel's side, Articulate's last chapter takes interviews, pitches and big meetings.
It is one of four books in Across the Table, and each one reads on its own.
Who it's for
- Anyone who negotiates contracts or buys for a living
- Anyone about to take a job offer, or sitting on an interview panel
- Anyone who sits through sales pitches and tender presentations
- The friend about to take a job offer or buy a car
What's inside
- 17 tactics, one per chapter: what it feels like from your chair, where you will meet it, and the one thing to do when you notice
- The negotiation in order: anchor, frame, concession, clock, reopen, and the counter to each
- The job interview from both chairs, including what to say when they ask what you earn now
- The pitch and the presentation, from the side being pitched to
- One 96-minute meeting told in full, with every move marked as it lands
- Two lists: 19 tactics to recognise only, and 7 that are fair to use
- A counter card, one action per tactic, and a note on which famous findings did not replicate
“It was done to me, full time, until I could see it coming.”
Questions readers ask
- Is this one of those influence and persuasion books?
- It explains each move from the receiving end and shows what it sounds like across the table. A recognise-only tactic is never presented as something to do.
- Does it cover salary negotiation?
- Yes. Chapter 8 shows a strong candidate losing about £14,000 in nine seconds to one question about her current pay, and Chapter 21 gives the sentence to say instead.
- Is it based on behavioural psychology research?
- Where a tactic rests on a study, the study is named and so is how well it held up. Several famous findings did not replicate, and Appendix C says which, so you never quote one across a table.
- Could it make me manipulative?
- No. Every technique is explained from the point of view of the person it is done to. A short list of fair moves sits apart from the rest, and nothing appears on both lists.
- Does it help with office politics?
- Agendas you did not write, recaps that quietly add things, "everyone is comfortable with this", the item reopened as people stand up. Each is named, with its counter.
Free to print
The tool from this book
The page as it appears in the book, blank, with a PDF for each. Part of The Hazel Crowe Toolkit.
- The counter card
One action per technique. Sized for a phone screen. Read it in the 10 minutes before an interview, a negotiation or a call, and send it to anybody about to take a job offer or buy a car.
Where it comes from
Nobody's Fool comes from the buying years: 20 years on the receiving end, through somewhere over 1,500 supplier pitches and a great many interview panels.
Every person and conversation in it is a composite, built so that nobody can be recognised. About Hazel Crowe
