Chapter 62

The Competitive Drive

The Competitive Drive is what neophyte negotiators know best and it’s why they see negotiating as challenging. If you assume the other side is out to beat you, by any means, you will fear meeting someone who may be a better negotiator than you, or someone who is more ruthless. This drive exists at car dealerships. The car dealer attracts customers by offering “the lowest prices in town” but pays its salespeople based on the amount of profit they can build into the sale. The customer wants the lowest price even if the dealer loses money, or the salesperson loses his commission. The salesperson wants to drive the price up because it’s the only way he can make any money.

Negotiators using the Competitive Drive believe you should find out all you can about the other side but let the other side know nothing about you. Knowledge is power but competitive drive negotiators believe that because of this, the more you find out and the less you reveal, the better off you’ll be. When gathering information he distrusts anything the other side’s negotiators might tell him because it may be a trick. He gathers information covertly by approaching the other side’s employees or associates.

Because he assumes that the other side is doing the same to him, he works assiduously to prevent the leaking of information from his side. What’s causing this approach is the assumption that there has to be a winner and there has to be a loser. What’s missing is the possibility that both sides could win because they are not out for exactly the same thing; and by knowing more about the other side, each side can concede issues that are important to the other side but may not be significant to their side.