I recently contacted a landscape designer to get a bid on our backyard and he came out to explore our thoughts. After checking everything out, he said he would put together his suggestions.
He called a few days later and asked me to come to his nursery so he could show me his design and recommendations. I did so – and he gave me the hard sell.
“You need to sign right away,” he said, “or we won’t be able to get everything planted this fall.” He was friendly, but the pressure tactic was obvious. He also offered a free can of spray for the trees.
The atmosphere totally changed, however, when I told him I wasn’t ready to sign and wanted to discuss it with my wife. He then got really upset, reneged on the free offer, and even refused to let me take a copy of his design home to show it to my wife.
Wow! I couldn’t have recommended less effective behavior from someone trying to close a deal!
The result? It left a horrible taste in our mouths and provided a great incentive for us to look at alternative designers and places to get plants and trees. Which, of course, we did.
Why did he do this and what can we learn from it, so we avoid these same mistakes?
One, I’m quite certain he tried to pressure us with a short deadline because his price was extremely high relative to his competition. And he did it with weak leverage, as we didn’t have to do his deal. My wife, an excellent negotiator, then shopped around and found the same plants and trees for 1/3 the cost elsewhere.
Two, he offended us when he took back the spray he had offered for free (the offer was a smart move based on social psychologist Robert Cialdini’s “The Reciprocity Principle”)! It would have been far better to not offer it in the first place. Not a good idea if you care about closing the deal at some point (which he did as he revised his bid later). I expect the spray only cost around $15, too.
Three, I understand why he didn’t want me to take his design home. After all, he had spent significant time and effort developing it and was afraid we’d just use it to get a better deal elsewhere. This is why some landscape designers charge for the design itself. But he didn’t.
Plus, the cat was already out of the bag, as I could just describe his plan to my wife. So, his refusal to let me share his plan with my wife just increased the incentive for us to contact his competitors anyway.
He also could have shared it with the understanding that we keep his actual design confidential. That would have been reasonable, and I would have been hard-pressed to say no.
Instead, we just said no to him.
Latz’s Lesson: Pressure tactics like super short deadlines without leverage can and will backfire, especially when combined with unreasonable tactics like reneging on a free offer and refusing to give the bid in writing.
* Marty Latz is the founder of Latz Negotiation, a national negotiation training and consulting company that helps individuals and organizations achieve better results with best practices based on the experts’ research. He can be reached at 480.951.3222 or Marty@LatzNegotiation.com.