What Do You Do When Things Get Difficult?

If you are conducting business negotiations for high stakes where the outcome will be largely determined by how much credence is given to certain critical information, you can draw inspiration from the following recommendations.

Repeat Your Pitch

If you believe that your situation requires you to bluff (within the limits described previously), train yourself to use those words that best express your position. Ask an experienced colleague to play the role of your counterpart, disputing your claims and asking difficult questions. Play the scene through several times until you feel completely at ease.

Make Life Difficult for Your Counterpart

If you suspect the other person of lying about key issues, make his life more difficult by revealing your skepticism and asking numerous questions. In particular, Maurice E. Schweitzer, the American lie detection specialist, recommends asking the other person different questions on the same subject, asking for details that you would expect him to know and others that you would not, raising issues out of chronological order, and posing apparently simple questions for which he will not necessarily be prepared. It is then possible that your counterpart will give himself away by making inconsistent claims or, more simply, by struggling to articulate a response to questions that should require no more experience than he already has. By posing an array of specific questions from the outset, you also reduce the probability of having to deal with lies.

Negotiate Guarantees

When you suspect your counterpart does not believe her own claims, it is sometimes possible to put her to the test by linking certain contractual clauses to the claims she is making. For example, if you are a seller and a buyer promises you major business growth once the initial contract is fulfilled, you can suggest deferring some of the customer’s anticipated benefits to make them conditional on the promised business volume actually being achieved. Likewise, if you are a buyer and a seller promises that his solution will achieve performance levels that seem unrealistic to you, you could propose that a proportion of the price be linked to the promised performance levels being confirmed. If this is done, your counterpart’s bluffing or lying will quickly backfire on him.