Now before reading further i want to warn you of something:
If you read negotiating tips on my blog then you are really lazy !. Please go and read stuff that is more thoroughly researched on the web. It will help you more.
If you are still here let me try to help a little. This is one defensive tactic that can help if you start to feel cornered. It is simple enough to execute but requires some personal humility.
You have to avoid positioning yourself as the deciding factor for you party’s position and at the same time try to always discuss with the deciding factor(s) from the other party.
The idea is that if you manage to do this and find yourself cornered you can appeal to authority in order to tell: Well i thought we can manage to do this but it seems like the big boss (or head engineer, or your girlfriend, or your mistress, etc) doesn’t like it so we need to find something else.
The commercial companies have takes this idea and made it an art form. For example most of the big companies will discuss salary compensations with you based on the so called “salarial bands”. It has multiple advantages for them. One advantage is that you can’t really negociate with the HR representative for you compensation if you aren’t really a very strong candidate (and you know it) because (s)he will just say: That’s Company policy. Sayonara!
Another nice useful side effect is you can avoid injuries like in the below example discussion (taken from the movie The Grapes of Wrath):
Muley: You mean get off of my own land?
Agent: Now don’t go to blamin’ me! It ain’t my fault.
Muley’s son (Hollis Jewell): Who’s fault is it?
Agent: You know who owns the land. The Shawnee Land and Cattle Company.
Muley: And who’s the Shawnee Land and Cattle Company
Agent: It ain’t nobody. It’s a company.
Muley’s son: They got a President, ain’t they? They got somebody who knows what a shotgun’s for, ain’t they?
Agent: Oh son, it ain’t his fault, because the bank tells him what to do.
Muley’s son: All right, where’s the bank?
Agent: Tulsa. What’s the use of pickin’ on him? He ain’t nothin’ but the manager. And he’s half-crazy hisself tryin’ to keep up with his orders from the East.
Muley: Then who do we shoot?
(found on the QuoteVadis site)
Mihai
