The Art Of Bargaining - How To Obtain The Best Deal

In any negotiation, the two parties have a potential arena within which they are prepared to negotiate. They both have a 'Want' position - the ideal outcome for them. They will also have a 'Need' position - the least they are willing to accept. Successful bargaining should always operate within the need and want perameters of both parties.

The golden rule when bargaining is to make any concessions you offer conditional. As they say in Yorkshire, 'You don't get owt for nowt!' You do not offer anything without getting something back in return. 'If you could agree to do this for me, I may be able to do this for you.'

For example, after getting poor service in a restaurant, more often than not, we do nothing about it. Sometimes, if we do complain, we accept an apology...we exchange getting the anger off our chests for the apology. If you think about it, that's been a pretty good negotiation for the restaurant manager; he has not had to give much away. Why not instead suggest a solution, ask for that extra bottle of wine, say that you'll overlook the poor service if the manager is willing to make that gesture...the negotiation is more balanced now. (Hint: always make sure that you don't care how long the dinner is going to take, pick a restaurant with poor service and order expensive wine!)

At the proposal stage, you are testing and prodding, you are not committing yourself to anything. You are twiddling the knobs to see what they feel like, and just like when you are buying a car, you are opening and closing the doors to see that they shut with a satisfying 'clunk', you are not yet committing yourself to anything.

Propose confidently. This is where good preparation pays real dividends. If you are clear on your own negotiating perameters and have thought through where you think the other party might move, you will be more certain that what you are proposing is reasonable; you will deliver it more confidently.

When you are getting proposals from the other side, don't interrupt them. Very often there are concessions contained in proposals and very often they will offer the concession asking nothing in return; they have just given you a gift.

The most important word in bargaining is 'If'. The second most important word is 'Then'. You join them together and get, 'If you will do this, then I will do that.' So to put all of that into more flowery language, you state your condition first followed by your concession.

Make sure that you do it in this order. If you say it the other way round, 'I'll do this for you if you do this for me', then, human nature being what it is, the other party will hear the first bit, what you are going to do for them and that'll be the end of their listening.

Open at a realistic position, which means somewhere close to their 'Need' position but within their negotiating arena. If you open outside their negotiating arena, then your position will not be taken seriously. Move modestly from your opening position. For example, if you have £1,000 to 'give away', it's best to give a reasonable concession to start with, maybe £500, and then, if pressured, give another £100, then £50 and so on. The other person will get the impression that you are being increasingly squeezed on price and that there is less to give. If, instead, you had offered £100 and then kept giving additional chunks of £100, then it might appear that you had lots to give as the money kept coming easily.

If you can, link issues. Try and keep your negotiating package all together, with all of the issues linked and all conditional upon each other. The other party may well attempt to negotiate the issues separately. If you let them do this they'll pick them off one by one. You'll be in a much more powerful position if you can keep them all linked. Of course, the reverse is true. If their issues are linked, try and break them up and negotiate on each one separately.

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