Negotiations are the toughest part of the marketing business.
Whether you’re negotiating a new contract, your salary or even a merger, getting everything to work out in your favor is never easy. How often do you hear someone say, "I got everything I was asking for… and more"? In fact, even reading that line someone just won the lottery (it’s not something you hear all that often). There’s an old saying in real estate that the best deals are those where the buyer feels like they paid more than they should have for the house and the seller feels that they got less than what they were asking for.
There are a few things to think about prior to the negotiation that will affect the outcome.
I’ve had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Herb Cohen on more than a few occasions. Cohen is widely regarded as one of the best negotiators. He’s written a few books on the topic (You Can Negotiate Anything and Negotiate This!). One of his main themes to a successful negotiation is caring. He says: "You have to care… really, really care… but not that much." His point? You have to be willing to put everything you have into a negotiation, but you also have to be willing to walk away from it. If you’re not willing to walk away from it, it’s not a negotiation.
Finding your bottom line in two-parts:
Walk away.
The great philosopher, Kenny Rogers, once said, "you’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away and know when to run." Walking away from a deal is the hardest thing. I believe that most people wind up in bad deals because they didn’t do their homework. They didn’t define their non-negotiables and they don’t have their five desired outcomes. I walk away from deals all of the time, simply because they were deals that weren’t fair. I believe that negotiations are easy when the people negotiating know that one party is delivering a service of value while the other party is happy to pay for that service. The chasm is usually smaller than people think and it’s usually the ego that gets in the way. Walking away from deals is easy for me because with the two-step process defined above, I can remove both the ego and emotion.
What are your tips for getting what you want?
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