The Silent Negotiator

A few years ago my friend Jane sold her house. She decided not to use an estate agent and advertised in the local press.


Before long a mother and her young daughter came to visit, and it was obvious they were interested in buying. So Jane offered them a cup of coffee and the three of them sat down at the kitchen table.


After exchanging a few pleasantries the visitor explained that she was interested in buying and made an offer of £170,000. This was £10,000 below the asking price and was a little less than Jane was hoping to get. Nevertheless, the offer was not unreasonable so Jane spent a moment or two thinking before responding.


Whilst she was deciding how to reply she heard her visitor say, 'Or perhaps I could meet you half way'. Up to this point Jane had said nothing in response to the offer and yet it had just been increased by £5000. What should she do now?


Once again, Jane suspended her reaction. This gave her valuable thinking time. During this time she pondered how readily her buyer had moved on her initial offer. It occurred to her that this person was very keen to buy. With this thought firmly in mind, Jane was now ready to speak. She explained that she had only just placed the house on the market and was expecting a lot of interest. In view of this she was not ready to reduce her asking price quite yet. The buyer instantly responded by agreeing to pay the full price, and the sale was finalised a few weeks later.


At this point, it is worth mentioning that Jane is a very experienced negotiator who is very aware of just how useful silence can be. On this occasion, she chose not to reply instantly to the first offer. She had two reasons for this.


She wanted to take a moment to consider what was being proposed.
It was obvious that the buyer was keen to buy and she did not want to frighten her off by responding immediately and negatively.


She was also aware that many people are uncomfortable with silence and will often fill a quiet spell with words. This often results in them modifying their original offer, as happened on this occasion. This was not the effect that Jane was trying to achieve this time, but she was certainly not unhappy that it happened.


All too often negotiators are too quick to respond. The pace of their negotiations get faster and faster and before they know it they have reached a deal they are not really happy with.
We could probably all take a leaf from Jane's book and slow down a little. Silence at the right time in a negotiation can be a very powerful tool.



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How to turn a spaniel into three guinea pigs

A few days ago my wife telephoned me at work to tell me about a cocker spaniel puppy she had seen. It was so cute and could we buy it?

I pointed out that we already have a pet dog and that we could do without extending the pack right now. Now, much as I love my dog I am also very aware of the responsibility that comes with him and the fact that he is quite a tie. The last thing I want right now is a second dog in the house. There is also the question of expense to consider and I made my argument against getting a second dog along these lines.

After minimal protestation my wife gracefully accepted my point of view and I congratulated myself on my superb persuasion skills

That evening I returned home from work and my wife said, ‘Katy would like to ask you something.’ Now, Katy is my youngest daughter and I was pretty sure what was coming next.

I was expecting more pressure to buy the puppy but this time with my daughter applying emotional blackmail. In fact, my daughter asked for a guinea pig instead. Imagine my relief. That did not sound so bad and a guinea pig would be a lot less expensive than another dog.

Within minutes I found myself agreeing to Katy’s request.

Had I been conned? Such was my relief at not being pressed on the question of the puppy that I readily agreed to the guinea pig. Would I have agreed so easily if I had been asked for a guinea pig in the first place? I doubt it.

Now, I consider myself to be a pretty good negotiator but I had fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book. Make an outrageous demand and then drop your demand to your real target and you will have much more chance of getting what you want.

I made the cardinal sin of not concentrating and ended up losing hands down.

Just to put the record straight I don’t for one minute think that my wife and my daughter deliberately set me up. However, I did return home last night to discover that we had acquired not one but three guinea pigs. The explanation was that we had to have one for each of my three children. Which leads me to another lesson learned from this encounter. Always be sure to agree what has been agreed at the end of a negotiation – preferably in writing.

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Secret Customer Service Mr Bond?

I’ve just returned home after watching the new Bond film Quantum of Solace. Very good it was too and it got me thinking about the Bond character.

Imagine if he had chosen a different career to the Secret Service. What if he had chosen customer service instead? How would he treat his customers?

Whilst he might be tempted to shoot some of them I suspect he would probably treat them with a calm professionalism. After all that is the way he behaves in all of the books I have read and all of the films I have watched.

Here is a character who in one scene is engaged in a life or death struggle with one or more villains. He barely escapes alive and lesser mortals would retire to a quiet corner licking their wounds.

Not James Bond! A few minutes later and he is fully composed and ready for his next conquest whether that be a beautiful woman or doing battle with another arch villain. No matter how bad the day he has had the next person Bond deals with would have no way of knowing that. His smooth sophisticated mask is never allowed to slip no matter what.

The question is whether we are always as good as Bond when doing our own jobs. Everyone has bad moments and we all have days when nothing seems to go right. And yes, we all get that customer who just rubs us up the wrong way. However, that should not become the problem of the next person we deal with. He or she deserves our best. That means a calm welcoming and professional response.

Everyone we deal with deserves the same level of service. Mr Bond would know that and would be sure to behave in the right way. Do we always do the same or could we learn from him?

You may not be a Bond fan but are there are fictional characters you admire? If so, what are their qualities? Imagine them in your job role and think about how they would perform it. What could you learn from this and how could this help you become even better than you already are?

Customer Service You Can Keep

When we ordered our new cooker we were delighted with our purchase. We had been shopping around for a few weeks and had found a stylish piece of equipment with all the features we needed. We were also pleased with the helpful and friendly attitude of the salesman, even when we declined to pay for the extended warranty.

The one cloud on the horizon was that when I got home, I discovered that I had lost my wallet. I phoned the store and was told nothing had been handed in. I took up the invite to leave my telephone number in case the wallet turned up. This may seem an unrelated diversion from the story, but read on.

At the time of ordering our cooker we were having our kitchen refitted, so a quick delivery was important to us. We were, therefore, delighted that an early delivery could be arranged. Indeed the cooker was duly delivered on the arranged date. So, apart from my lost wallet we were pretty happy. However, this was not to last.

We had made our purchase from a branch of one of the large electrical chains and had been warned against them from friends who'd had bad experiences in the past. There were no such problems for us. Or so we thought until the cooker was fitted.

It didn't work! In fact it blew the fuses in our house.

In our naivety we phoned the store expecting apologies and more importantly some help. Instead, they told us that as we had taken delivery of the cooker it was no longer their problem. The manufacturers guarantee applied and we would have to contact them direct. In fact, they went so far as to suggest that the problem was of our own making for not buying the extended warranty.

Can you guess what happened when we phoned the manufacturer?

Well, they told us to go back to the retailer!

After several phone calls it became clear that neither the manufacturer or the retailer were keen to take responsibility for the situation. This was not very impressive bearing in mind we had spent over £600 to buy the cooker.

Eventually manufacturer and retailer talked to each other and agreed to send an engineer to look at the cooker. If it could not be repaired they would replace it.

A date was agreed for the inspection and I took a day off work for the occasion. The engineer did not turn up. There followed another round of conversations which culminated in a splendidly rude lady saying that no appointment had been booked and that this was all my fault. My attempts to get an early re-arranged appointment failed and it was another couple of weeks before the engineer arrived.

The fault turned out to be minor and was easily fixed. We now have a perfectly good working cooker and we are happy with it.

We are not quite so happy with the service we received. We are not naïve enough to think that things never go wrong. We do, however, think that it is reasonable for suppliers to take responsibility for the situation when this happens.On this occasion it took countless phone calls from us and several weeks of waiting to have this problem sorted out.

Most of the people we dealt with were helpful and friendly, but they were just not effective or interested in sorting out my problem. If this is customer service you can keep it.

Now the good news is that my wallet has finally turned up. I few days ago I got a letter from a local police station saying that my wallet had been handed in to them. When I went to collect it I asked who handed it in. They told me that it had been posted, accompanied by a compliment slip addressed from the store where I had bought the cooker. It had only taken them 8 months to get around to doing this. Like me, you may be wondering why they didn't just phone me as they had promised.

Oh Well! Lesson learned. Next time we need electrical goods, we'll try Comet's or John Lewis. There is one place we will not be going back to.

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