Behavioral advice
- Be willing to live with ambiguity
- Be resilient
Maslow hierarchy of needs
Survival
- Security
- Social
- Self-esteem
- Self-actualization
- Be willing to live beyond stage three most of the time - surpass the need to be liked
- Don't be conflict adverse
Dealing with the decision maker
- When present with a proposal, don't ask for something specific in return but let the other person offer up an item for exchange
- Get the other person to commit first
- Always flinch when proposed something
- Never say yes to the first offer
- Ask for more than you expect to get
- Never be too eager to close the deal - they will give away half of his/her negotiating range
- Shut up and wait after delivering a rejection or delivering the details of a proposal
- Always negotiated in absolute numbers instead of percentages
- Convince them that you are the only one that could solve the problem
Finding the decision maker
- Ascertain the person you are dealing with is the actual decision maker
- Do not present yourself as the decision maker
- When possible always defer to higher authority. The more vague and abstract the better
- Seek to neutralize the other person's Higher Authority Gambit ( also watch out for good cop and invisible bad cop)
Appeal to their ego
- Get their commitment that they will take the proposal to the committee with a positive recommendation
- Use the qualified subject to close (assume close)
Example: let's sign the deal and put in the condition that it will be closed unless the following conditions occur
Things to watch out for
- The value of a service greatly diminishes after its been performed
- Negotiated your fee before you do the work
Situations
- Impasse
incomplete disagreement over one issue that could kill the whole agreement
- solution:
Propose to set aside the issue and discuss the other details based on the assumption that we will be able to sort out this issue as some point
- Create momentum by solving other smaller issues first
- Stalemate
both sides are still talking but not making progress
- Solution:
Create momentum by solving other smaller issues first
- Change the dynamics by altering one of the elements
- Deadlock
lack of progress frustrated both sides causing conversations to come to a halt
- Solution:
bring in a 3rd party
mediator
- arbitrator
- Keep an open mind about deadlocks - they happen sometime
Tactics to watch out for and utilize
- Good cop / bad cop
- Red Herring - they ask you for something impossible to divert attention so as to get something they want out of you
- Cherry picking - if on the receiving side, Don't deal
ask for itemized breakdown
- Learn so much about your competitors that they would see it as a waste of their time to go talk to them
- The deliberate mistake
They offer a good deal to you and then realize from their boss the terms no longer apply
- Acting dumb to make their feel OK and cause them to let their guard down
- Don't get thrown off by their tactics just focus on the concession you are targeting for
Powers of concern
- Reward power
- Coercive power
- Reverent power -
When people invoke the power of traditions. The power accumulated by doing things consistently
- How to neutralize it:
Demonstrate exceptions do exist
- Demonstrate that times have change
- Situational power
Always do enough research so that you can challenge the situation