The Authority of Levers

We have been taught that the primary lever in the negotiation is your USP, which we have already looked at in some detail: your product or service, the company, you the person. In 20 years of negotiation, the USP has always been proposed as the primary key for increased profit, better deals and greater profit: the primary key to increasing power and increasing confidence. If we don't have USPs, or are unclear about them, our power is fundamentally weakened.

The unique selling proposition does, however, have a major drawback and I wonder if you can think what it is? Let me put it another way. When you read the words 'unique selling proposition', who are they usually referring to? You, the seller - and actually that is the cardinal sin of marketing. So what do we do? We develop the USP into what we call in my organisation the MDSA© (Measurable Difference & Specific Advantage). Now that is about your counterpart and measures the specific advantage to them, in units that are tangible for them. The clearer that measurable difference and the more specific the advantage, the more authority you have.

Distance is another lever. Distance retains strength: if we are weaker, meet them, if we are stronger, don't meet them. I was tying up a deal with an international author and seminar presenter. I had quoted £5,200 for a particular package and I was sent a message by his office manager (via his car phone) saying the deal could go ahead if we could agree £5,000. He was a buyer with significant strength and he retained it by using the distance. I couldn't contact him personally and he used that fact cleverly.

The third lever is 'fallback'. Fallback means that I have a good or acceptable alternative to agreement being negotiated. The more easily we can walk away from the negotiating environment, the better our result.

If you need the deal more than you can cope with losing it, you will be less authoritative in the negotiation. If there is real pressure on you to secure this one at all costs, it will affect the outcome negatively, particularly if you believe there is little pressure on your counterpart to do the same. I rang up go-karting arenas today to book my daughter a birthday treat for next Tuesday. Because I was in a rush and desperate not to let her down, I never once asked for a better deal - especially as there was only one slot available in the entire evening. When I told my son how much it had cost us, he looked at me and hung his head! The truth was that I needed the deal more than I could cope with losing it.