It s all I Have Got

It's all I Have Got

Your house is ideally situated and my wife and I like the area, but you want £150,000 and with our deposit and the maximum we can borrow, the most we can find is £140,000 - it's all I've got.

The implication is a positive attitude towards us and our proposal but an implied limit to the funds available.

A normal but wrong response is to offer discount. A good negotiator must have another proposal available. Any change to price must mean a change to the terms. If we are required to change the price, we must insist that they accept changes to the proposal or elements of it.

Suggesting a changed proposal will test whether our counterpart has genuinely limited funds. If they are not interested, they are simply trying it on. We might test the tactic by saying, 'Fine, can I assume that if we could arrange the mortgage through our contacts we can go ahead?'

The simple countermeasure in general terms to this tactic is to offer an alternative:

• Offer changed methods of payment.

• Offer a change to the service - for example, instead of two days we could redesign the course into one longer day.

• Offer to change the whole package in some way - for example, the helpline, the printed report, the briefing session conducted by telephone rather than by visit, etc.

• Offer changed volumes, or changed delivery dates.

The key is that any change on price must accompany change in the proposal, otherwise we give away what we should never give away.

I mentioned earlier how one of my recent clients used his strength by keeping his distance, and dealing with me through his office manager. You recall he was asking me to reduce my proposal by £200. I was frustrated, I was busy, I was tired and someone was lowering my aspirations. It would be so easy to rationalise away £200. But £200 × 10 clients per month × 10 months is £20,000. That is a lot of money. So I changed the proposal. I said we would agree to £5,000 but it meant reducing the number of hours available on the telephone helpline and we required payment on the day. A different price required a different proposal and we both settled happily for that.