The Naked Negotiator

Churchill’s Greatest Speech?
In 1946 Churchill was a beaten man. The previous year, he had lost the prime ministership after his Conservative government has suffered an overwhelming election defeat.

Churchill wanted to warn the Western world about the spreading menace of Soviet communism, but he worried that Americans wouldn’t listen to someone who was now just the leader of an opposition party, rather than the head of an elected government.

Churchill’s opportunity to convince American’s came when he was invited to speak in Fulton, Missouri. He knew that he had to paint a vivid, graphic picture of what was happening in countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia.

He toyed with words like “Soviet imperialism,” “militarism,” and “tyranny,” but he rejected these as shapeless abstractions. None of these would paint a vivid enough picture in his listeners’ minds.

On the train trip down to Missouri, Churchill scanned his map of Europe. To highlight the spread of communism, he drew a black pen line from the Baltic Sea through Poland down to the Adriatic Sea. He retraced the line, searching his mind for the right image to describe the Soviet threat.

The inspiration came at 2 a.m. during an overnight stop in Salem, Illinois, when the right word picture appeared — which Churchill quickly added to his speech.

The next day, Churchill delivered the words that would mobilize the United States and move it to action:

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

The iron-curtain metaphor became one of the galvanizing images of the Cold War. When China fell to Mao Tse-tung’s communists in 1949, the metaphor changed to bamboo curtain.

The iron curtain speech was, according to James C. Humes (author of Churchill: Speaker of the Century), Churchill’s greatest speech.

Why was it the greatest? Because a single speech triggered a change in American feelings about the Soviet Union (America’s wartime ally), and started the Americans to rearm.

Whenever you present a persuasive case, look for an organizing metaphor. The right metaphor will clinch a deal or sale.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Protocol remains important. Few people ever forget being slighted - specifically being ignored.

In 1954, President Eisenhower’s, then Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles refused to shake Chinese communist leader, Zhou Enlai’s hand at the Geneva conference on Indochina.

In a secret visit to China in July 1971, the Chinese had made it clear to Henry Kissinger that the humiliation - Zhou being snubbed by John Foster Dulles - remained an unhealed wound.

So, when President Nixon followed up his historical visit to Beijing in 1972, he was acutely mindful of the need to rectify the earlier slight.

Nixon walked down the steps of his plane in Beijing with his arm outstretched to Zhou.

“Your handshake,” Zhou told Nixon during the drive into Beijing, “came over the vastest ocean in the world - twenty-five years of no communication.”

Popularity: 12% [?]

The next time you are planning to make an offer, consider making two offers - of equal value to you - at the same time.

Making multiple equal offers simultaneously has a number of advantages.

One, it helps you uncover what the other sides priorities and interests are. This is especially important where the other is suspicious or distrusts you.

Two, MEOs demonstrate that you are flexible, empathetic, and you’re keen to meet their precise needs.

Three, MEOs are useful in a government or tender driven process where you are required to meet specific requirements. Your first offer, is your answer to their specific request. Your equivalent offer, shows what you could do for the price given more flexibility on their part.

Popularity: 18% [?]

In Jon Steel’s book: The Perfect Pitch, the Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business there is a remarkable tale of how London came “from rank underdog” to beat Paris to host the 2012 Olympics.

The winning pitch was the result of a brilliantly executed pitch delivered in Singapore. Paris had hosted the Olympic games two times before in 1900 and 1924. But so had London, in 1908 and 1948.

Here is the closing video. The video shows children from China, Russia, South America and Africa inspired from pictures of the London games going on to become Olympic Athletes. The film finishes with one of the children on the line at an Olympic 100-meter final.

Popularity: 19% [?]