Every so often a book lands on our desk that has nothing to do with wills, trusts or inheritance tax, and yet ends up shaping half our client conversations that month. Chris Voss’s Never Split the Difference is one of them. Voss spent over two decades as an FBI hostage negotiator before moving into teaching business people how to negotiate, and his book is built almost entirely around real, high-stakes conversations rather than academic theory. For the business owners and property investors we work with in and around Worthing, that makes it unusually useful, because so much of what we deal with — selling a company, untangling a shareholder dispute, or getting a parent and their adult children to actually talk about money — is really a negotiation dressed up as a family or business problem.
Why a hostage negotiation book, and why now
We are not in the business of recommending airport thrillers. We recommend this one because we keep seeing the same pattern in our work: the legal and financial position is often perfectly sound, but the conversation around it breaks down. A business partner will not engage with a shareholders’ agreement review. A father will not tell his children what is in his estate plan. A seller and buyer are £200,000 apart on a valuation and both convinced the other side is being unreasonable. Voss’s core argument is that most negotiations fail not because the numbers do not work, but because people negotiate as if the other side is a spreadsheet rather than a person who is anxious, defensive or simply frightened of losing face. That insight travels well beyond hostage situations, and it travels particularly well into the sort of conversations business owners in their fifties and sixties have to have.
Selling a business: the £200,000 that was never really about £200,000
Anyone who has been through a business sale knows the last stretch is rarely about spreadsheets. Voss’s most quoted technique is what he calls tactical empathy — genuinely naming the other side’s position and pressure out loud, before you make your own case. In a sale negotiation that might sound like: “It looks like your board wants this deal closed before your financial year end, and that’s putting you under real time pressure.” Simply saying that, accurately, tends to lower the temperature and get the other side talking rather than digging in. Voss also makes a strong case for asking calibrated, open questions instead of pushing for concessions — “How am I supposed to do that?” rather than “That’s not acceptable.” It sounds soft, but it puts the problem back with the other side and often produces a better answer than a flat rejection would have.
For business owners thinking about an eventual sale or exit, there is a wider point here too. The value you actually keep from a sale depends heavily on how the deal is structured, not just the headline price — and on planning that sits alongside the negotiation, such as how Business Asset Disposal Relief (with its £1 million lifetime limit) applies to a sale, and how the proceeds then sit within your estate. Voss’s book will not tell you any of that; it is squarely about the human dynamics of getting a deal over the line at a price both sides can live with. But a well-negotiated deal that then sits badly for tax purposes is only half a win, which is why we always encourage clients to bring in the tax and estate planning conversation well before contracts are exchanged, not after.
Shareholder disputes: label the emotion before you argue the facts
Shareholder disputes are some of the most corrosive situations we see, precisely because they combine business logic with old friendships, family loyalty and, often, genuine hurt. Voss’s technique of labelling — naming an emotion you observe in the other person, without judgement — is surprisingly effective here. “It sounds like you feel you’ve been carrying this business for years without recognition” lands very differently to “You’re being unreasonable about your shareholding.” The first invites the other person to correct you or open up; the second invites a fight.
He is also sharply against the idea of “splitting the difference” to end an argument quickly, which gives the book its title. His view, based on years of hostage negotiations where a 50/50 compromise can genuinely cost lives, is that a lazy middle-ground settlement usually satisfies nobody and often unravels later. In a shareholder dispute, a rushed 50/50 split of a disputed asset or role can look like fairness on the day and cause resentment for years. It is far better, he argues, to slow down, understand what each side actually needs (not just what they are asking for), and build an agreement that holds. That patience is exactly what tends to be missing when a shareholders’ agreement has gone stale or was never updated as the business grew, and a dispute suddenly reveals gaps that nobody thought to close.
The family money conversation nobody wants to start
This is where the book has been most useful to us directly, because it is the conversation we see families avoid more than any other: a parent trying to talk to adult children about money, property, or what happens when they are no longer around to explain it themselves. Voss’s advice translates well. Start by acknowledging the awkwardness rather than pretending it is not there — “I know this isn’t an easy conversation to have” does more work than diving straight into figures. Ask open questions rather than making statements: “What worries you most about how we handle this as a family?” tends to surface the real concern (often fairness between siblings, or fear of a parent being taken advantage of) far faster than a lecture about probate or tax would.
He also talks about the power of a genuine “that’s right” moment — where the other person feels properly understood, rather than simply agreeing to end the discussion (his less useful cousin, “you’re right”, which people say just to move things along). Families who reach a real “that’s right” moment about money tend to make decisions together that stick. Families who get a polite “you’re right” from an adult child who has not actually engaged tend to find the same disagreements resurface at exactly the wrong moment — usually after a death, when nobody has the energy for them.
Where the book runs out of road
We would not want to overstate this. Voss is writing about negotiation technique, not about UK tax law, trust structures or the practical mechanics of estate planning, and the book should not be mistaken for either. It will not tell you how the residence nil-rate band tapers for larger estates, how Business Relief interacts with a farming or trading business, or how pensions are expected to be drawn into the inheritance tax net from April 2027. Nor does it touch on anything as specific as a letter of wishes or how a trust should be worded — that is simply not what it is for. What it does very well is give you a way of having conversations that are currently not happening at all, or are happening badly. Plenty of good legal and financial planning sits unused in a drawer because the family conversation that should accompany it never took place, or took place once, badly, and was never revisited.
Our take, thirty years in
After three decades helping families in Sussex sort out what happens when someone dies, or when a business relationship breaks down, we would say this: the technical side of estate and succession planning is usually the easier half of the job. The harder half is getting people to sit down and talk honestly about money, fairness, and what they actually want — while they still can, and while tempers are still manageable. Never Split the Difference will not replace proper advice on Business Relief, shareholder agreements or inheritance tax planning, but it is one of the better books we have read on how to get the conversation started, and kept going, without it turning into a row. For a business owner facing a sale, a partner facing a shareholder disagreement, or anyone who has been putting off telling their children what they need to know, it is a genuinely useful hour or two of reading.
Three things worth trying this week
- Before your next difficult conversation — sale, dispute, or family — write down what the other person is likely feeling, not just what they are likely to ask for.
- Swap one planned statement for an open question. “What’s making this hard for you?” often gets further than “Here’s what I think we should do.”
- Resist the urge to split the difference just to end an awkward conversation. A quick compromise that nobody actually agreed with rarely stays settled.