Coming clean right off the bat: I can’t personally teach you how to haggle or negotiate anything. It terrifies me almost as much as falling in love or doing improv theater. But at least I’m not alone.
Amy Reiter over at Salon.com posted a great article yesterday called “How I learned to haggle”, and while I recommend the whole story, I’ll distill the bullet points for you here:
- Practice
- Act as if it’s a game
- Just say, ‘Is that the best you can do?’ And then be quiet [...] Silence is a great tactic.
- Negotiate for yourself as if you are negotiating for others
I can also vouch for the silence technique as being particularly effective in getting your co-workers to understand your point of view. I don’t mean offering anyone the “silent treatment,” just including some longer pauses during the course of a conversation that starts with people disagreeing. Now that I think about it, I guess it is a kind of negotiation.
Any other tips? Please leave them in the comments below.
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