Tag Archives: car

Why the best negotiators bask in bad feelings

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Most of us have had no shortage of bad feelings lately. So, many of us might be interested to learn of an important situation—negotiation—in which bad feelings are actually quite good. Put differently, bad feelings represent a necessary and useful component of many productive negotiations. So, the most effective negotiators tend to not only tolerate but bask in them—thereby making their task more negotiable.

Consider the following bad feelings and the reasons a knowing negotiator might indulge them:

  • Dissatisfaction: Negotiations rarely start until somebody, at some level, gets dissatisfied with something. You don’t buy a car until you realize you could drive a better one. You probably wouldn’t negotiate a job offer if it already fulfilled your dreams. Since dissatisfaction triggers the very need to negotiate, effective negotiators learn to appreciate it.
  • Anxiety: Truth be told, many effective negotiators feel quite anxious about negotiating. “Gulp! What’ll I actually say?” And if the anxiety persists into the negotiation, it’s probably not helpful. But at least in the short-term, anxiety may motivate them to prepare rather than winging it. Insofar as anxiety elicits the hard work needed to succeed, effective negotiators may learn to indulge it.
  • Irritation: The best negotiators don’t necessarily smile at their counterpart’s offers. They often recognize that those offers fall annoying short of a standard—perhaps a standard of fairness or a better offer. “But wait—my coworker makes twice that much!” And their irritation is critical, as it motivates them to respectfully offer a counteroffer rather than roll over and accept something suboptimal.
  • Fear: Even as they respectfully offer a counteroffer, many people experience abject fear at their counterpart’s reaction. “Are they gonna hate me? What if they say no?” Or maybe they offered a counteroffer a while ago and haven’t heard squat. “Do they already hate me?” It’s scary! But effective negotiators know they need to not only deal with their fear but bask in it, as withstanding adverse reactions and prolonged delays is often the only way to show resolve.
  • Guilt: Negotiators have many behaviors at their disposal, some more ethical than others. Since many of these behaviors fall into a gigantic grey area, negotiators must often consult their feelings—and particularly their feelings of guilt—to obtain an imperfect signal of ethicality. If an upcoming tactic elicits preemptive guilt, probably best to avoid it. If a past behavior seems skeezy, probably best to rectify it. Having had to make many tough ethical calls, the best negotiators are happy to hear from their consciences.

In sum, many bad feelings have an upside in negotiation—and the best negotiators know it. No one’s advocating for more dissatisfied, anxious, irritated, fearful, and guilty people walking around. We’ve got enough of those! Nor is anyone saying that all negotiations—or all of a negotiation—should feel bad. They shouldn’t! I’m simply suggesting that a moderate dose of negativity can be functional in negotiation—and even that experiencing bad feelings should help you walk away feeling better.

How to out-negotiate the car dealer: Cultivating your alternatives

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My last post discussed one of the toughest negotiations—convincing a toddler to comply. This post considers one of the most feared—dealing with a car dealer. Most people would rather extract their teeth through their eyeballs than talk to a car dealer. How can we hope for a decent deal when the guy across the table is continuously snapping his jaws?

This problem is formidable, but negotiable. The key is to recognize that there is not just one guy or one table—that you (like the dealer) have alternatives.

Anytime you negotiate anything, you have a primary negotiation partner and you have a next-best alternative: whatever you would do if the current negotiation fails. Since the landmark book Getting to Yes, this alternative has been called your BATNA: your best alternative to negotiated agreement. As I usually repeat ad nauseam in a negotiation course, BATNAs are your greatest source of power in a negotiation. If you have a good BATNA, you can walk away from the current crocodile. If you don’t, he might as well snap away. So, speaking now to those of us who don’t “like” negotiating, take heart! Being a powerful negotiator doesn’t mean acting like Donald Trump; it means having a viable plan B.

I know of few negotiations where BATNAs are more important than car purchases. As the buyer of a car, you typically have multiple—often many—dealers to choose from. The single-most important thing you can do to get a good deal is to visit enough dealers (by taxi, if you have to) to fall in love with at least two cars—each at a different dealer. As I often remind my students, falling in love with one person is a beautiful and wonderful thing in everyday life. Yet, falling in love with one house, one car, or one job is almost guaranteed to make you a sucker. Why? Because if you’re head-over-heels over one car, for example, you have no choice but to submit to every snap of that crocodile’s jaws. You have to accept whatever terms they offer.

Conversely, what happens if you find yourself swept away by two cars at different dealers? At a minimum, you learn about the market. Quite often, the cars are quite similar, but one is inexplicably cheaper. I recently found the exact same car at two dealers, 10 miles apart, but $3000 different in price. That’s right, a $3000 discount, no “negotiation” in the traditional sense. In addition to learning about the market, cultivating an alternative immediately affords you confidence. With a $3000 discount in hand, I can assure you that I felt much more comfortable pushing back on the original, higher-priced crocodile. As a result, and most importantly, having a good BATNA immediately gets you a better deal. Without revealing the exact amount of the discount to any other dealers (which is a topic for another post), the $3000 discount gave me the confidence to go to a third dealer and get the same discount on the same car with better features (all-wheel drive for those icy mid-Atlantic hills).

In sum, one of the single-most important strategies in any negotiation, especially a consequential purchase, is to cultivate a good alternative, a strong BATNA. Doing that is not only effective; it’s heartening for the non-born negotiator, as it doesn’t require negotiation tactics as much as time. As little of that as we all have, I would advise any serious negotiator, negotiating any serious issue, to find enough time to find a BATNA.

Have you cultivated your alternatives in a past negotiation? How has it worked?