Effectiveness of Hard Bargaining Tactics with Skilled Negotiators (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Let's turn to hard bargainers and their easily identifiable tactics that people sometimes use, exploding offers, threats, good cop, bad cop, that sort of stuff. From your research and experience, how effective are all of those behaviors when you're dealing with experienced negotiators? Because those tactics can sometimes really, really, I think, influence others to make concessions. But if you've got a skilled negotiator in front of you using those tactics, would that be a good idea?

Speaker 2: Well, the first thing to do is consider whether you want a long-term or a short-term relationship. If it's a very short-term relationship, and as the aggressor, shall we say, you can get what you are trying to get in many different places, then probably you don't care, really. If it's a skilled negotiator on the other side, then they'll have a variety of different tactics to cope with that, which we can talk about. And they'll also decide whether or not this is a true negotiation. Because to have a true negotiation, there needs to be an overlap. There needs to be mutual benefit somewhere in having this conversation. If there isn't, if you're that far apart, then it's not a negotiation. So the skilled negotiators will, first of all, remember that. So that's the first thing they'll do. This is a negotiation. It isn't a power play. Skilled negotiators will have done the preparation and planning properly. And the most important thing is that they've planned their worst-case scenario on each of those negotiable issues that they may have. They will also make sure that they don't give concessions, that every time they move, it's in trade for something else. So what we have to do is to make them conditional proposals. So we'll do this if you do that.

Speaker 1: If I will you.

Speaker 2: Yes. And if that won't happen, if the other side won't look for any conditional trades, particularly when you know because of your planning that there are certain things that they want and that you can give them as long as you get something back, then you probably need to go back to what we'd call the fallback position, which is probably the most important part of your planning, which is, what happens if I don't get a deal? And if at that point, you're saying, well, if I don't get a deal here, I can go and sell these things over here or whatever the negotiation is about, then you probably want to say, I'm sorry, this is not for us. Let's walk away from it. So you're kind of reversing that threat a little bit to test whether or not it is a true negotiation or not.

Speaker 1: What would your advice be if somebody is dealing with a hard bargainer, diffusing some of these tactics? What would be the key things to keep in mind?

Speaker 2: Some of the behavioral tactics, so testing, understanding, test whether or not they are really, really talking from a real position where they are, is that really what they want to do? Do they really want to push us away? Are they sure that they're not going to move on anything? But don't behave weak. That's the important thing, and that's where the fallback position comes in. You have to behave just as powerful as them, but to diffuse it with some of the testing understanding, particularly common ground. So what is the reason for being there? What is the mutual benefit? Not necessarily of each individual negotiable issue, but a mutual benefit of us both walking away with a deal that we're happy with, and it's not a 50-50. That negotiations are very rarely 50-50. So the deal that we're both happy with is probably going to be the common ground, and if you can't keep coming back to that common ground to lubricate the discussion, then there's a good chance you're not really in a negotiation that's going to be of any benefit to you.