This is part five of our negotiation book,
introduction distributive tactics. The last
chapter, we talked about the distributive
negotiation win-lose, and in this chapter
I'm going to just quickly introduce to
you this idea of how do you execute? What
are the tactics? So remember strategy is
the big picture, tactics are the
behaviors that you use to actually
execute it or do it.
So, how you gonna do that? Let's quickly
remind ourselves then distributive
bargaining situation is all about
maximizing, about winning, right? Making
the best you can out of the situation.
This means that you're going to beat the
other side, you're going to get more than
what they get.
Or they're going to give up more than
what you give up or whatever combination
of those things. A key way to do this,
very key is do not share your secret
information. This is really super key and
this tactic is like fundamental. If you
let the other side know what is your
limit? What is your resistance point? They're
going to just push you right to the
resistance point, but you want to get far
away from your resistance point so you
really need to keep your information
secret.
This means inside your team you need to
all understand what information is
secret, and what information are you
going to tell. And of course the
information you tell does not have to be
true information, but rather information
to help you win the negotiation. Help you
get more from the negotiation, to help you get
your goal. So of course, how can we do
this? Well, let's look at a few ways we
can do this for these tactics. One is you
want to find out what is the other
side's resistance point.
So you want to keep your information
secret, but you want to get the other
side's secret information. And one of the
keys are:
What's the resistance point? What is their
highest price or lowest price?
Depending if they're a buyer or seller.
And not just their prices, but also other
things but we often focus on the price.
Number two: You want to influence the
other side's guesses about your secret
information. So, maybe your resistance is
10, you cannot pay more than ten. You are a
buyer, you cannot pay more than ten but if
it's over ten, it's too much but you
don't want to tell the other side and
you want to tell them this may be
something like five. Because five is so far
from ten, so you influence them to think
it's five even you could tell them, it says
five but they won't believe you.
Maybe you react somehow using your body
language, using some people on your team
to send them information they think your
resistance is five. So, we'll get up to
five and then stopped because they're worried if
they go over five, you're going to walk
away from the negotiation. So, this is
called influencing the other side's
guesses,
you can also influence the other side's
outcome evaluations. So, this means
basically this idea of two ideas that
we've asked before that we've
asked ourselves. These are the ideas of
what is the value? What is the importance
of this negotiation now? And what is the
importance of the relationship in the
future over time? So, that other team
your counterparts, they're trying to
think of their strategy and they're
thinking about how important is this? And
also about the relationship and you can
influence that. You can make them feel
that, this is more important or less
important, or you can make them think
something about the relationship in the
future. It may be true, it may not be true,
right? You can say something for example,
we're going to have a strong
relationship in the future, so give me a
break now. Now, in the future do you give
them that good relationship? Well, maybe
not?
Of course if you don't, they won't trust you
in the future but that's
another case, right? So, that's influencing
the other side's outcome evaluations.
How much? How important do they think
the outcome is? And then how important is
a relationship? Change their feelings
about that. And the last thing we can do,
the last tactic is influenced the cost
of delaying or leaving a negotiation. And
of course in our game, this is really
important because we have multiple days
to execute our RPG negotiation. But some
groups will act quickly, while other
groups will take 4 or 5 days.
What's the risk of taking longer? If you are
buyer, there may be no more sellers they
may have sold all their inventory. And
vice versa, the other way is true also,
that if you're too fast you may
low price, while another seller waited
low price while another seller waited
until the last day and they were able to
sell it for a higher price, because there
were no other supplier. So, you can
influence this idea on the other side.
The team you're negotiating with your
counterparts, by making them think if I
wait longer what will happen? Or if i
delay my decision,
what will happen? If I give up
negotiating, what will happen? So you
influence them to think that this is
more important than it is for, to make
them think that delaying is not good,
they should buy right away. For
example, we often hear this, limited time
offer, right? This is a one-time offer, we
cannot make this offer again. Meaning you
better do it now, so we're trying to
influence its thinking. Now is the last
chance, this is the last chance to get
this special price. That's this idea of
influencing this idea of the delay. So,
these are the kinds of tactics you can
use in a distributive situation. Remember
again the emphasis is get to your goal,
get to your goal.
Don't give up something, get as much as
you can to get your goal and this way
you can win more.
And if you give up too much, the
other side is going to be winning at your
expense.