Negotiation! Wow – What a skill to have!
If you can negotiate and influence people, getting all you want will certainly be no trouble at all. If you are ethical and a great negotiator, well… great things can definitely happen.
This last two weeks have been a time of intense negotiations – some easy, some not so easy, some a bit underhanded and some just required a lot of persistence.
The key is to see it as a training process. I find that I am getting better at dealing with different kinds of people and their various ways of negotiating especially as I remain open to learning new skills.
The Tough Negotiator
The most long standing one has been going on for about two weeks now. I mentioned a long time ago now that we would be moving. Well, we still are, but to a different place from where I had thought we would. One of the benefits of learning about property is that I get to know some of the various options that are open to me. Recently, therefore instead of settling for what I did not want, I decided to go out and search for a house I wanted to live in and ask if the owner would sell it to me slowly. I finally found one and so I have been negotiating with the property owner about it. The idea is to rent at a discount and buy at a discount. I quite like the look of the house and I do not have to get rid of all my possessions in order to fit into it with the family so it seemed appropriate.
It has definitely been an interesting time of negotiation.
This owner knows his stuff so he is definitely one to watch. After a week of intense negotiations, we reached agreement (I thought!). I took the family to see the house and then he reopened negotiation again with the claim that he had received another offer. Now, I am almost certain there is no other offer but’ soft silly’ me allowed myself to be drawn in, knowing it was all part of the game that business people play.
Ultimately, one of the main keys is to determine what is really important to you and stick to your guns while conceding in places where it really does not matter to you.
This owner however had played a slightly underhand card of hoping that we would fall in love and so therefore be willing to agree to anything. Unfortunately, he does not realize that the house we live in is pretty comfortable and there is no rush to leave. Also, there are many landlords out there who would consider such a deal anyway, so we really are not as motivated as he thinks so his reopening negotiations just resulted in a waste of another week as we went back and forth, but hey…
Now, he seems to be playing the ‘time is of the essence’ card to avoid us getting the contract looked over by a solicitor but unfortunately, he is doomed to failure so we wait and see how it all pans out.
Keys to defending yourself from hard negotiators
Do not get too attached to anything- Be prepared to walk away if it really does not work for you
- Read a lot of books on the subject
- Learn to recognize when you are being played
- Make sure when considering things of great value to you, that you have a solicitor or at least an unattached other person. Tloml has been a constant steady guy that does not allow me to get too carried away.
- Again, ladies, be prepared to walk away
- Do not be unreasonable. Decide ahead of time what is a good deal to you and settle at that point (We have all seen what happens when people let emotion make them greedy or cocky – ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ and ‘Deal or no deal’ spring to mind!)
In between all this, I have been caught up in quite a few other negotiations – I mean, everyday is a negotiation with two young, talkative (slightly mischievous) girls, anyway. Being a mother is definitely great practice for negotiating with any hard nosed business person.
For great concepts on negotiations, you must read ‘[amazon_link id=”1601631391″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Secrets of a power negotiator[/amazon_link]’ by Roger Dawson. Definitely an amazing book which helps you realize how frequently, you have been played and how to avoid it and how also to negotiate yourself.
The Business people just do not know it yet! 🙂
