Managing Time and the Perceptions of Time
Patience
What does it take to be a really good negotiator? One critical thing is to develop the ability to be patient. I know, the world moves faster every day. You’ve got to be out there making things happen and you can’t waste any time.
But, as you’re chugging along on that impatience track, making things happen, and getting things done, when you see the sign up ahead “Entering Negotiationville,” you had better put on the brakes, stop that train, get out and switch over onto the patience track, because if you go through Negotiationville on the impatience track, they will pick your pocket. The impatient negotiator is always at a disadvantage.
Okay, so you’re impatient. You can‘t help it. Well then you’ve got to be a very good actor, because if the other side senses that you are impatient, all they’re going to do is try to slow things down, make you crazy, and extract a much better deal.
People get impatient in negotiations because they often seem to drag on forever. We hate it when nothing is happening, so we try to make something happen. Because we are impatient we give too much away and later wonder why we did it.
It is much easier to be patient if you have a little mental picture of what is really going on in the negotiation. Let’s imagine that you have just finished a negotiation. There were six issues to resolve and when you look at your watch you realize that the negotiation took exactly one hour.
You happen to be a very meticulous person and you kept accurate track of how long it took to resolve each of the six issues. You now go back and review your notes. Did each issue take 10 minutes to resolve? In other words, after 20 minutes had you resolved 2 issues and after 40 minutes 4 issues? Probably not, negotiations almost never proceed like that. Most likely what you will find is that a lot of time had elapsed with very few if any issues resolved until the last moment, and then everything seemed to pull together at once. This is very common and normal. The other party just wants to see if you will blink first. So the main message is, don’t panic. Because if you panic and say, “oh my goodness, nothing is happening,” you’re liable to give away the store.
An alternate pattern that is also quite common is where we resolve a bunch of the easy issues relatively quickly, and then, on the remaining issues, nothing happens until the last minute. And usually, price is one of those last-minute issues. Again, this is a very common pattern so don’t panic.
If you show your impatience, you are in trouble. The other side will use it to their advantage. Here are some giveaway statements that will get you in trouble:
Why don’t we work through lunch so we can get this done today?
We aren’t really going to have to wait a week while your pricing people sort this all out, are we?
Even if you do have a deadline or are impatient by nature, you’ll be dead in the water if you let that slip. Yes, negotiation can be a bit boring, as each side is sitting there going over the same stuff waiting for the other party to blink first. Sometimes, the best rule is “Don’t do anything, just sit there.” So be a good actor. Using statements like the following show resolve and a willingness to stay there as long as needed.
Let me just call my wife/husband/SO since it looks like I won’t be home for dinner.
Let me just go over the specifications one more time to make sure that there isn’t a misunderstanding there that might be causing our difficulties in reaching an agreement.
I know it’s getting late but this is so important we really shouldn’t hurry our way through it.
I know of one executive who had gone to China to try to develop a major joint venture with a Chinese company. He spent a whole week negotiating and getting nowhere. But, instead of getting frustrated and leaving, what he decided to do was to move out of his hotel and into a more extended stay facility. He then called his wife and asked her if she could come join him, which she did. And he did all of this very openly, letting the other party know what he was doing.
As soon as she arrived, the whole environment changed, everybody got down to business, and they were able to reach an agreement in three days. Obviously, the Chinese were operating on the assumption that all Americans were impatient and wanted to get things done quickly and that therefore, they would cut a much better deal if they waited him out. By inviting his wife to join him and having her actually do so, he demonstrated that he was willing to take as long as they wanted in order to consummate the deal. Once it became clear to them that their tactic had failed, they got down to business and reached an agreement.
Speed-Up
With the speed-up tactic, one party tries to make the case that unless a deal is reached by a certain time, everything will fall apart and there will be no agreement. This is an area where it is probably not a good idea to use a bluff, or if you are bluffing, it had better be very good. People tend to discount statements such as:
I only have 45 minutes to talk with you, so if we can’t reach agreement by then, we’re not going be able to make a deal.
My boss told me that if we don’t have the deal by the end of the week, she is going to look elsewhere.
Buyers tend to be skeptical of:
• “There’s a price increase next Monday so you’d better buy now.”
Buyers have gotten used to sales speed-up techniques and tend to ignore them. Most believe that when salespeople say this, that even if it were true, they’d still get the lower price if they ordered a few days after the price increase, and in many cases they are right. If the company really does mean it, then the buyer called the bluff incorrectly. If you’re the buyer, make sure you know what the case is.
Other situations when speed-up will work for a seller is when there is a shortage of materials, or where delay would affect lead times substantially. In these cases the buyer may really need to move quickly. One of the most powerful speed-up tools is an upcoming change in the external environment that can be verified by both parties.
I was once involved in some real estate negotiations at the same time Congress had revised the capital gains tax for real estate sales. The old rules, which were more favorable to the seller, would not apply to deals that closed after April 15. Since many deals were simply not feasible under the new tax rules, April 15 became an ironclad deadline. Therefore, we all knew that if we could not get the deal done by then, the whole thing would fall apart.
The other way that speed-up can work is if one of the parties has an acceptable option available that they can move to if no agreement is reached. For example, if the company seeking to license its new technology has an acceptable but not quite as good marketing firm with whom they can contract, they may say something like:
We really want to work with you because we think you have some advantages over other firms that could also bring this technology to market. However, we simply can’t let this process go on forever. Unfortunately, if we can’t reach an agreement by this Friday, we are going to have to reluctantly go with our second choice.
One other point, if in the middle of the negotiation the other side suddenly tries to speed-up the process, that might not be a tactic. Is there perhaps some urgent new time pressure that you didn’t know about? This is a good time to start probing time pressures again, because if there is one, the other side’s LAS may have moved in your favor.
Delay
The delay tactic is the opposite of the speed-up. It can be used to try to smoke out the other party’s impatience or time pressures. If you say:
• “I think we’ve made excellent progress today. I suggested we go back and do a little more homework and number crunching, and get back together again next Thursday.”
And if the other party responds:
• “You know I don’t think we’re really all that far apart. Why don’t we just work on this a little longer and see if we can’t put it to bed today.”
Then, you pretty much know that the other party needs to make a deal soon.
The second way that people will use delay is when they hope or expect that the external situation will change in their favor. A malpractice insurance claims representative once told me that in cases where there clearly was malpractice and the only issue to be negotiated was how much the insurance company would have to pay, he would try to delay the negotiations if he felt that the patient was liable to get substantially better in the near future, thus reducing the damages that might be awarded by a court.