The language you use in making your offers and concessions and the signal it sends can have a strong impact on whether your offers or concessions will be accepted. Here are some general tips: Be specific and detailed Explain your rationale and tie your offer to...
With the ongoing debt-deal negotiation between President Obama and House Speaker Boehner providing us with an elucidating example of the offer-concession process (check out this handy chart quantifying both sides’ moves via the Washington Post), here are five tips to...
When it comes to negotiations, I’m often asked: “How much should we move in a negotiation after we open? And how much should we move later, and when and how? I usually respond with the following story. John had just filed for divorce and was representing himself in...
I bought my first car in 1987. It was the shortest negotiation in my life. My dad offered to sell me his 1981 Datsun 280ZX for its “Blue Book” value, $5,500. I said, “OK.” End of negotiation. “Wait a second,” some of you might say. “Didn’t you once write that first...
We needed some extra tile to fully renovate the kitchen in our new vacation home, so we asked the seller about it, and he offered to sell it for around $800. After doing some Internet research and asking the opinion of a flooring shop owner, I told the seller a...
President Barack Obama said on Feb. 9, “I suppose what I could have done is started off with no tax cuts (in the stimulus bill), knowing that I was going to want some, and then let (the Republicans) take credit for all of them. And maybe that’s the lesson...
“He doesn’t get it. He believes his business is worth $50 million when it’s highly unlikely any buyer will pay more than $25 million based on his financials. How can I help him reset his expectations without seeming too negative regarding the sale of a business he...
“It’s your turn,” he said. “I conceded on the close date and it’s time for you to move and extend the royalty term.” This “reciprocity” standard – it is “fair and reasonable” for you to do this for me because I did something like this for you in the past – can be...
I recently reached a dead-end in a negotiation largely involving one major price issue. I didn’t want to come down – and my counterpart wouldn’t go up. And I knew he had reached his end point, because he had already gone back to his boss twice for more, and we had a...
