The Importance Of Professionalism

The key to dealing with a pro is to come off as someone who has done their homework. You don’t have to pretend you’re as good a negotiator as they are—this isn’t an ego thing. But if you demonstrate early on that you know what you want, and you’re serious about negotiating, then any pro worth his or her salt will take you seriously.

And if they don’t?

Your best bet is to find someone who will.

Here’s another buddy story, and this one involving car sales, which seem to make more people nervous than just about any other area they negotiate in.

Friend goes into a car dealership that is having one of those twenty-four-hour sale-a-thon things. He already knows which model he wants, and in fact has already spoken to another dealer and knows roughly how much he’d have to pay to get the model he wants. Finds a salesman, gives him a little bit of background on what he wants. Salesman right away tries to steer him to another model.

“No, I want a Maxima SE,” he says. “And I want leather.” And blah-blah-blah, whatever other stuff he’s into. I may have the model wrong there, and some of the blah-blah-blah may have been yadda-yadda-yadda, but you get the idea.

Salesman says, “Well, I can’t do leather as an option, but I can do after-market leather.”

My friend was savvy enough to recognize that was a complete BS line: He not only knew from research that leather was a viable option, but had also scouted around enough to know that after-market leather is a notorious area, worse even than after-sales warranties and rust-proofing. (Spare me, please.) When the salesman told him that, the salesman was really saying: “I’m not taking you seriously.” Now, since my friend had already signaled that he knew what he wanted and had done some research—he was able to name the packages that were offered with the model—he concluded that the salesman wasn’t really a pro.

My friend’s a generous guy when it comes to assessing character.

So what did he do? Two things: He decided he wasn’t going to buy a car there, since the dealer didn’t care enough about his cars and reputation to properly train its salesmen.

And he asked to talk to the sales manager.

Not to complain, but to get a real deal.

In short order, the sales manager—who was a real pro—cut through the BS and gave my friend what under other circumstances would have been an excellent price. (Let’s call it $200 under invoice, which was a good deal in this case, though you and I know those invoice numbers are baloney, right?) He then had that price to use back with the other dealer—also a pro—as he nailed down the deal. And incidentally, he was willing to pay a higher price at the other dealer because the negotiator (read “salesman”) took a professional attitude. His interpretation was that the negotiator simply reflected the attitude of management, and that if anything went wrong with the car down the line, he wanted to be dealing with professionals.

He didn’t pay a higher price, but he would have. At least that’s what he says now.