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Things to Never Say While Negotiating
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- imcqueen 16y agoIf I'm the seller I would prefer to throw out a number. That way you can simply pad the starting point, coming down in price is much easier than going up.
- marcinw 16y agoThat's great until the person you're selling to immediately jumps on that. At this point, you are left wondering, "Gee, was my offer that good? Was it too low? I wonder what he was expecting to pay. Damn, I could have made 20% more had he made the first offer." Same goes the other way around. The trick is to have both people negotiating to leave feeling as if they won. In your case, you will leave feeling as if you lost.
- larrik 16y agoI'm not convinced that that's a good enough reason not to do it. If you are that much more concerned about getting the best possible price (or whatever) vs. getting a set number you actually want, then you should go into the negotiation with enough information to already know what the best possible price should be.
- imcqueen 16y agoI understand what you're saying, but I don't think I'd feel like I lost. Getting the other person to agree to your terms is winning.
- zach 16y agoIf you feel like you lost, your initial offer wasn't high enough. I once suggested a salary range from [thrilling for me] to [unbelievable] and was offered the high number. I never felt like I "lost" -- until of course a year later when we were all laid off in early 2001. Ah, the "dot-com era." I suppose some people will always be haunted by suspicions their deal could have been better. But for me, people instantly accepting my high offer is not going to be a lifelong regret.
- joelmichael 16y agoI am guilty of the "Fuck you" one. The offered terms insulted me so much I no longer wanted to do business with the person. Had I taken this article's advice, I would have stayed calm and moved toward some highly unsatisfying "middle ground" purely to "close the deal". We are faced with innumerable opportunities in our lives, and we need to filter out the best ones; for most negotiations, a successful outcome is not making a deal.
- gfodor 16y agoI definitely think there are certain people who are born with negotiation skills, and those that are not. You can always get better of course, but some people have a natural ability (a specific form of empathy) to know what exactly the other party is thinking, feeling, and expecting, and can exploit it as much as possible. Its just as much a skill as a talent, and can be used for both good and evil.
- dpatru 16y agoAccording to what I've seen and read, there is no special talent to knowing what another side is thinking. It's just good listening, not assuming anything, and asking lots of questions. People who don't do these things will rely on guessing to understand the other side and will often be wrong.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- blantonl 16y agoSomeone who is a good listener, doesn't assume anything, and asks lots of questions has a special talent.
- chanri 16y agoIs there any way to gain practice on negotiation? As an entrepreneur, are there any resources on the internet where you can "practice"? The only thing I can think of is playing poker or something at the casino...
- Mz 16y agohttp://www.csub.edu/regional/PDF/erm_outline.pdf http://www.csub.edu/regional/PDF/erm_outline.pdf Negotiation/Conflict Management CSUB-Online InSt 435 (5) or Mgmt 430 (5) It's online, so when I took it, there were no in-state/out-of-state fee differences. When I took it (a long time ago), the two main texts for the class were "Getting to Yes" and "The mind and heart of the negotiator". http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Heart-Negotiator-Leigh-Thompson/dp/0131407384 http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Heart-Negotiator-Leigh-Thompson/d... I highly recommend the second book especially. Towards the end of class, there is a group negotiation exercise. I thought it was quite good.
- dstorrs 16y agoDoing some negotiating that is low-stakes but has a value attached. For example, talk to a friend / sibling / whatever and offer to babysit / trade services (e.g. web design for massage) in exchange for $WHATEVER.
- nostrademons 16y agoHave kids or babysit? Kids are awesome negotiators, because they don't care about the other party at all, they just want to get the best deal for themselves possible. They also start from a position of weakness in most negotiations, which means they need to try some wonderfully creative strategies to get what they want. Actually, I wonder why most adults lose that ability as they get older. My guess is that sometime in the teen years, people start caring about what others think of them, and that is poison to negotiations.
- JabavuAdams 16y agoThis. Having a toddler has given me a lot of practice in how to negotiate. Also, a negotiation book (The Secrets of Power Negotiation) helped me with the toddler.
- keefe 16y ago>1. The word "between. I largely agree with this article and even this point in particular, but I think you will often end up in a situation where stating a range can move things along quickly. If you qualify it properly, it can be a useful way to turn the tables. For example, if you are discussing rate you could say well, from the other people I've been talking to it looks like positions like this one pay between $45 and $65 an hour, depending on various factors, but of course more detail is required to pin the number down exactly and it varies for each individual, so what kind of budgetary, time and code quality constraints are on this project? I think this is a nice way of turning the tables, it would be socially weird for them to just ignore the question and be like, "so what EXACTLY were you looking for?" Of course, they may end up offering you at 45 to start, but you can just kind of scoff at that (if you want) and be like well this seems more complex/difficult because... there's nothing wrong with continually edging away from the question until they get frustrated.
- enjo 16y agoIn my experience that sort of thing has rarely turned out well for me. There really is something to the concept of anchoring. When you throw out $45-$65 their going to anchor on the $45 and now you have to move them off of that. Although I suppose if you threw out a really high range that might have the same effect. "I'm thinking $60-$85" and get them anchored on the $60 number you're really after. You might scare them off with the top number in the range tho... I've always done a lot better by coming in at slightly above the number I really want. If I'm looking for $60, I'll come in at $70. I'll justify why I'm charging that, and then let them move me off of it down to what I wanted in the first place. After all, if I said "$45-$65" and they paid $60 then they feel like their paying too much (their coming in at $15/hour over what you anchored them on). By starting at $70 and coming down to $60 they feel like they got a steal.
- tonyshili 16y agoI think it's fine to say and let the counter party realize that various factors and details may affect the actual rate, but another to do this is to still state a single rate and qualifying it with a statement that lets the counterparty know that it is still negotiable. Because sometimes giving a range I feel is almost giving off as a sign that I'm not confident in negotiation process and I don't exactly know where to place the counterparty.
- semanticist 16y agoPerfectly optimal financial value doesn't always equal perfectly optimal social value. For my current job my employer's first offer was exactly the amount I'd been looking for. So I said 'yes' and didn't negotiate at all. Maybe I could've talked them up, but I got what I was looking for and we closed the meeting in under 15 minutes with everyone happy. If someone offers you what you want, why waste time negotiating for more?
- paulbaumgart 16y agoHow did you determine what you wanted?
- semanticist 16y agoCurrent salary, what I wanted to make more than that, what I felt was reasonable given other roles advertised at the level I'm at, the normal things.
- frou_dh 16y ago> If someone offers you what you want, why waste time negotiating for more? I have and will continue to waste swathes of time on far less beneficial pursuits so I can find plenty time for that!
- fizx 16y ago> If someone offers you what you want, why waste time negotiating for more? Because you can use the extra amount to provide additional security for your family, or runway for your next startup?
- semanticist 16y agoPossibly, but not necessarily. My target salary wasn't especially low given my skill set and salary levels where I am, and was a substantial increase over my previous salary. There wouldn't've realistically been room to haggle much up, my new employer being aware of current market conditions. The figure I'm talking about is the one you give to recruiters when they ask how much you want - it's my starting/'ideal' figure. For a job that matched my desired career path almost perfectly, as a greenfield project at a very early stage start-up, using exactly the technologies that I'm interested in, offering me the number I've been giving to slave-traders, I didn't feel like negotiating. If it'd been a suit-and-tie deal with one of the many local banks and insurance companies, that might be a different story. Their paperclip budget will be orders of magnitude more than my current employer's staffing budget. If I ask for too much money it might simply cut the runway down until it's no longer viable, and then I've wasted everyone's time. Ultimately, I think this was an ideal 'negotiation' - they offered me exactly what I wanted, and I said 'yes'. Sometimes all the negotiation tactics and stupid head games can distract that whole point is for everyone to get what they want. I don't have space in my head to deal with second-guessing myself and my (then potential) employer over it all.
- atgm 16y agoIf someone said "fuck you" to me, I would no longer want to negotiate with them, plain and simple.
- knowledgesale 16y agowell, that is the whole point of saying it
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]