The Invisible Game

Chapter 11Personal Versus Paper Power: Where's Your Leverage?

There is an old sports cliché that underdogs cite after they have beaten a team considered to be superior: ‘That's why we play the games.’¹ That cliché also explains why we draw a distinction between personal power and paper power. Paper power – the measure of strength in the Visible Game – relies on tangible factors and arguments that aim to determine which party enjoys an objective advantage. Personal power reflects strength in the Invisible Game. It relies on intangible factors, such as one's ability to influence decision making through frames, choice architectures, and other techniques.

The potential for an uneven balance between personal power and paper power is why sales negotiations still take place. If personal power played no role in a negotiation, then all buying decisions would come down entirely to fact sheets, Excel models, and powerful algorithms. Those objective tools may indicate which competitor is superior and should win the negotiation. But think back to the sales negotiation that Gaby described in the very first story in this book. On paper, Mr Anderson's company should have won that deal. But when the negotiations finished, the underdog Gaby was the one departing New York City with a deal in her briefcase.

Personal power is often potent enough to offset objective advantages that the buyer or another competitor may have. Shifting the balance of personal power in your favour can become the decisive ...