Have you been caught off guard by people who don’t seem to want to negotiate with you, but you wanted to negotiate with them?

It happened to me recently. I was hired by a company to negotiate the purchase of some equipment, but the other side was not willing to negotiate. It was, “here is the price, take it or leave it.” I was mightily surprised since this purchase was worth more than ten thousand dollars to them.

Distinguishing the “warning signs” that they are unwilling to negotiate from the signs that they are just busy can be confusing. Here are some of the “warning signs” that I encountered. Think back to your most recent negotiation. Did the other guy say similar things to you?

* Sales person told me that she did not have room to move (i.e. lower the price) even though she knew a competitor did discount its items. Pretty obvious, except that people ALWAYS say that.

*  Sales person warning me – twice – that the competitors’ product was inferior. Again, this is pretty standard.

*  Sales person did not respond to email and voicemail request to put a quote together, even though I talked to her over the phone at the beginning of the process and told her that we were also getting quotes from two competitors. Now, this is where I got the message. I was aware of the earlier two “warning signs”, but I was not sure what to make of them.

Because all of these “warning signs” could be attributable to other circumstances, you need to look at the all of them in total to see the larger picture.

What did we do? We had a BATNA. Our Best Alternative a Negotiated Agreement with them was to purchase the exact items we wanted from a seller on eBay. (I was stunned at what you can find on eBay, even commercial equipment. Who knew? Not me.)

Here is what I would like you to take away from this newsletter.

1) The “warning signs” that someone is unwilling to negotiate are confusing. Only by keeping track of them and looking at the larger picture can you determine that the other guy really is not willing to negotiate, rather than over worked and frazzled like the rest of us.

2) Some people and businesses are not willing to negotiate. Maybe they dislike it. Maybe they are so comfortable with their profit level that they can watch a customer spend its money elsewhere. Who knows why.

3) Have an alternative to negotiating with them. Make sure before you start negotiations you know what you will do if they are unwilling to negotiate with you.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Tactics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.