Best Practices in Negotiation: A Walk Is As Good As a Hit
Best Practices in Negotiation: A Walk Is As Good As a Hit
When negotiating, we can wrongly come to believe we’re the Roman legions, able to march into distant lands and conquer, bending “inferiors” to our will.
We feel omnipotent. With proven techniques deployed here and there we can deftly cut through resistance, and accomplish nearly any objective.
Sometimes we do prevail, and bargaining feels exactly like that.
I recall the campaign of conquest that launched my successful seminar business. Having designed a simple, but compelling conversation starter, I persuaded about fifty key partners to sponsor my training programs from Hawaii to New York, a circuit that I developed and traveled with classes, all in about eighteen months.
From that beginning, came requests to write best-selling books, top tier speaking opportunities and more clients.
To this day, I recall the very
few prospects that declined, the ones that defied my ostensible success and remained steadfastly outside of my orbit. At the time, I was more than perplexed that they held out.
It offended me, which tells you how much I took success for granted.
But now, I see one important fact of negotiation that eluded me.
We don’t control nearly as many of the variables in bargaining as we think. When people decline, or a deal falls through, or we meet with unusual resistance, it is a good time to appreciate we simply aren’t right for everyone or every situation.
Step back, and contemplate matters. Call a time out. Regroup.
An old adage from “love literature” comes to mind: A tempestuous courtship means a tempestuous relationship will follow.
Let’s say it takes you an unusually long time to open discussions and then to sell a client. You might
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
did it come to this?” you’ll ask yourself at three in the morning, over a glass of milk or something stronger.
The other day and I came across the movie, “A Bridge Too Far,” about a World War II battle of attrition, a bog that should have been avoided.
If you’re finding a negotiation partner too resistant, especially early in your discussions, take that as a cue to cease activity, to end your session as quickly, yet politely as possible.
Don’t push your way to a victory that could mire you in defeat.
To borrow from baseball, in that case, to “Walk is as good as a hit.”
Dr. Gary S. Goodman is a top speaker, sales, service, and negotiation consultant, attorney, TV and radio commentator and the best-selling author of 12 books. He conducts seminars and speaks at convention programs around the world. His original course, “Best Practices in Negotiation” is offered at UCLA and UC Berkeley Extension, and his new audio program is Nightingale-Conant’s “Crystal Clear Communication: How to Explain Anything Clearly in Speech & Writing.” He can be contacted about professional speaking, seminar, and consulting opportunities at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.
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