Best Practices in Negotiation: A Walk Is As Good As a Hit
think that elongated preliminaries aired all the issues and answered every question, and now the sailing will be smooth.
Not so.
That reluctant client, whose incessant concerns you tried to dispatch with the verbal equivalent of whack-a-mole, hasn’t reformed or changed his paranoid pattern of thinking. He is very likely to foster yet more worries after you think the deal is done, to suffer from buyer’s remorse.
At minimum, this will require oodles of post-sale customer service and hand-holding, which are costly to you, preventing you from romancing better partners. And if a client’s regret is strong enough, he may stiff you, refusing to pay for the goods or services you already tendered.
Compared to customer service, collections efforts are even more vexing.
Looking back, you’ll wish you never wasted your time with such a loser.
“How
