Initial Intelligence

Hostage teams that have worked together for a while develop their own rhythm for gathering intelligence. Ideally, a separate person will be assigned not only to gather the basic information about the situation, but to update it as the negotiation goes on. Intelligence includes information both on the situation itself—the physical layout, were shots fired, etc.—and things that may help you deal with the other person: Is he married? Where does he work? Who has influence over him? And so on.

Everyday negotiations can take advantage of the same pattern. Remember that this stage involves looking at your needs before examining the possibilities of filling them. Most negotiations in everyday life are more open-ended than hostage situations—there may be many houses you could live in, or many refrigerators you can buy. Knowing what you need allows you to narrow down the choices to a specific few. That’s good—but you’re not ready to negotiate yet, just to do more research.

Let’s say you’re in the market for a new automobile. There are literally hundreds of models to choose from, each one of which will get you somewhere. You examine your own needs and decide that they come down to commuting to work locally and hauling wood and other items to renovate your house on the weekends. That helps you narrow your goal to a pickup truck. Your next move is to gather information about pickup truck possibilities, which leads you to conclude that you want one of the so-called compact pickups, which offer relatively decent gas mileage while still being able to handle a few bags of cement and an occasional two-by-four. You find there are four possibilities that will be relatively easy to research. That’s a good number—not too many to research, but more than enough possibilities to give you some flexibility as you go.

At this point you’re not ready to negotiate, but to gather more detailed information. This includes not just finding out the invoice and sticker prices, but things like options and possible colors and extras and how hard that stinkin’ CD player is to work while you’re driving sixty-five and drinking coffee and talking on the cell phone. Generally that means going to the dealer and kicking tires, if not a salesman. It’s only after all of the kicking gets done—all of the intelligence is gathered—that the commander makes a decision, picks one truck as his goal and another as Plan B and hands off to the negotiator.

The number one problem people make in sales situations is to begin negotiating when they’re still gathering information. They haven’t even decided what they want, and they’re talking seriously about money and service warranties.

There are reasons for this. Number one, the salesman is making a photocopy of your license and talking about how his mother needs one more operation to survive. And admittedly, human nature is going to push you at this stage to want to jump in and get it over with. Don’t do it—you’re the intelligence guy, the researcher, the gal with the thick glasses spending hours on the computer. Negotiation doesn’t begin until you’ve gathered all the information. Then the commander takes over.