Many years ago, I was flying from Hong Kong to Boracay in the Philippines for a diving trip. On the Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Manila, the checking in of sports equipment was free as was common practice at that time. When I checked in to the local airline however, they wanted to charge me for checking in my diving equipment. Indignant at this wrong that was being forced upon me, I argued for a solid 15 minutes that sports equipment is always free to check-in and reeled of a series of examples to support my case. The more the check-in assistant repeated the airline policy, the more agitated and stressed I became. Then they mentioned the price: “It’s only $2.50 Sir!”
I felt like a total wally. For $2.50 I had not only given the check-in attendance a hard time, but I had stressed myself out, wasted time and made myself look petty in front of other passengers. I learnt a lesson worth far more than $2.50 that day; know what you’re arguing over (aka “pick your battles!”).
Successful negotiators practise this. Some years later (in November 2014 to be precise) shortly after the umbrella revolution of Hong Kong was over, I was sitting in front of one of my landlords for my spa business. The location in question had been badly impacted by the month of road closures caused by the umbrella revolution and business in that location had collapsed by 50%. I needed rental relief, a request the landlords CFO had, without discussion, summarily dismissed.
Fortunately, I knew the landlord who as well as being a very successful businessman, was an excellent negotiator (the two tend to be correlated!). This is how the conversation unfolded: “So Neil, how much are we talking here?” I gave him a number, let’s say USD 25,000 for the sake of discussion. He looked at his CFO and asked how many months rental deposit they were holding from me, the answer was three.
“So if we reduce the rental deposit to two months that releases approximately 50% of the amount, and for the rest can I purchase treatment vouchers from your spa at a discount which we can then use to reward our clients?”
His response was genius. The landlord owned a boutique hotel brand and coffee shops so the vouchers had a marketing value to him. His solution also helped me attract new clients in addition to getting through the cash flow crunch. By first establishing the quantum of the discussion (ie how much money I was looking for), he did what I had failed to do when checking-in my diving equipment; he took time to understand the request and was then able to respond appropriately, in this case with a “win-win” solution.
Successful negotiators don’t lose their cool when they hear something that they don’t like. Instead, they probe to understand exactly what is being requested and the reason underlying the request. In negotiation theory, this is referred to as position vs. interests. Most people negotiate based on positions which results in a bartering style approach whereby each party gives up incremental ground until an agreement is reached. While this approach serves a purpose (we’ll cover that in another blog), it is not efficient because negotiated outcomes are not decided based on merits.
So, the next time you find yourself at an impasse or in an argument, whether in negotiation or a general discussion, take a step back and clarify what it is that us causing the blockage. You may find there are better solutions than damaging relationships and becoming stressed.
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