FEATURE | NEGOTIATING
REAP WHAT YOU SOW SIMON BUZZA provides the next two rules in his series of 12 key rules of negotiating RULE NUMBER 7 ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES In negotiation, and in life, everything that you do has repercussions. Things will come back to you one way or another. You cannot escape the consequences of your actions, and you will eventually see the long-term effects of your earlier decisions. “What goes around comes around,” as they say. Sometimes we get screwed over and there is nothing we can do about it. Really? I have never subscribed to this view, and a cold, hard look in the mirror by its proponents is generally very revealing. Let’s take a look at this from two different perspectives: l If the other party feels they have lost at the negotiating table l How our behaviours impact our results. IF THE OTHER PARTY FEELS THEY HAVE LOST IN THE NEGOTIATIONS Of the four potential outcomes from a negotiation, two include the word “lose” – as the negotiating spectrum (opposite) indicates. Any agreement or settlement that leaves one party a dissatisfied loser is not clever in the long run and will come back to hurt you later, sometimes in ways you cannot predict. This is a typical “win:lose” scenario, which ultimately turns into a “lose:win” scenario... Let me explain more. A very tough negotiator told me about a hard deal he had wrung out of one of his customers. He had demanded, threatened and bullied the buyer, ultimately negotiating a deal that paid considerably more than any other customer his business had supplied. The customer was a major one (about 15% of the total sales revenue), but the supplier had a technological edge, which it felt it could exploit to its advantage. So the salesman did, and he was proud of his achievement in “screwing the customer for every last penny I could get”. 16 WINNING EDGE
16-18 Buzza REVISE.indd 2
We happen to know the customer in question and a couple of years later we enquired of its procurement team if the story was true. The buyers told us it was and that, at that time, they had no option but to buy the items at the inflated cost. However, they subsequently felt so manipulated and “trampled all over” that they decided immediately after the price increase to ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
25/07/2017 12:35
