In the Restaurant

Carl RITCHIE: Why do negotiations with buyers so often turn into a dialogue of the deaf?

Margaret PEAKE (leaning toward him): I was going to ask you the same thing.

Carl RITCHIE: Are you saying that it’s the seller who doesn’t listen?

Margaret PEAKE: The seller hears but doesn’t listen.

Carl RITCHIE: How can you say that? Sellers analyze their customer’s needs and their rational and irrational motives; that’s how they are able to formulate a proposal, argue their case, deal with objections.

Margaret PEAKE: You’re quite right. Yet it always seems as if the seller is not really paying close attention. As soon as the buyer asks for better terms on pricing…

Carl RITCHIE (smiling broadly): Not buyers like you, Mrs. Peake!

Margaret PEAKE (still serious of demeanor): The seller doesn’t push things forward anymore; he stops trying to understand the buyer’s real demands.

Carl RITCHIE: But when a buyer demands a better price, his demands are quite clear; there’s no need to indulge in psychoanalysis.

Margaret PEAKE (in a harsher tone): Carl, if you do not understand why a buyer is demanding a better price, there will be only one option open to you, to reduce the price.

Carl RITCHIE: So what was your real demand on the occasion we’re discussing?

Margaret PEAKE: First, I needed to be convinced that your proposal was more competitive than one of your competitors’, who had made a very attractive offer.

Carl RITCHIE: I see. I should have asked you who I was competing against in order to describe the specific advantages of the deal that I was offering.

Margaret PEAKE: Yes. I was also keen to win the support of Mrs. Lambert, who had just joined us and wasn’t familiar with your company at that point. I knew that a good price would win her over.

Carl RITCHIE: I suppose that I could also have asked to meet her. That would have undoubtedly allowed me to answer her questions and to win her support without cutting the price.

Margaret PEAKE: Possibly. I was also wondering if I’d end up paying a higher price than your other customers.

Carl RITCHIE: Far from it! I had all the information at my fingertips so I could have reassured you on that point.

Margaret PEAKE: For all those reasons, Carl, you should have looked beyond my demand for a better price and you would have discovered my “real demands.”

Carl RITCHIE (briefly looking stunned): But that fundamentally changes the way in which I view negotiations! Looking beyond a buyer’s apparent demand to identify their real demands really is…

Margaret PEAKE (seriously): Yes, Carl, it’s the secret of the expert negotiator.