In the November 2007 issue of Consumer Reports there is an article entitled "How to bargain for almost anything". The basic premise of this article is that although most consumers are comfortable with negotiating the price of a house or car, they believe that everything else is more or less must be accepted at the price offered.
In the US and Canada, we tend to buy without considering the fact that there is an option to negotiate, whereas in other cultures there is an expectation that one does. This also transcends into the corporate arena, where often one encounters the attitude from the inevitable end users of a product or service that a quote is the end of the negotiation.
Moreover, there is often a fear associated with further negotiation -- "what if they get offended, then they won't do business with us"!
This is such a ludicrous opinion that you want to give folk a shake and say "wake up -- these suppliers are in the business of getting our business".
People fear a two-letter word "no". It holds many hostage, because they believe they don't know how to comeback to this retort. People feel embarrassed when someone says no, but in reality, in my mind, no just means find another way.
The one thing you don't do in a negotiation is state an ultimatum "if you don't do this I won't buy from you" -- unless of course you are willing to walk, and never re-engage with this particular company. It is better to probe and discover their business drivers, and carefully, but skillfully peel back to onion of their issues and determine what their bottom-line is and see how it maps to yours.
Beyond the business aspects of this, as Consumer Reports points out you can negotiate everyday, for almost everything. I've negotiated down my cable rates, my phone rates, my internet rates, just by asking how important my business was to these companies. I also ask for some type of discount when I purchase clothing -- if I'm a regular customer, I ask how important it is to this store to retain my loyalty.
In regards to loyalty, I have also recently written
to the bank which has both my personal and business accounts. I am always disturbed when corporations have special promotions to get "new" clients, but take their current and loyal clients for granted. Seeing a most recent promotion which gave new customers an iPod for switching to this bank, I wrote an email, asking what they were going to do for existing and loyal customers.
After a couple of emails (never accept the first response) I received $200 credited to my bank account. Not bad for a 1/2 hour work.
In the US and Canada, we tend to buy without considering the fact that there is an option to negotiate, whereas in other cultures there is an expectation that one does. This also transcends into the corporate arena, where often one encounters the attitude from the inevitable end users of a product or service that a quote is the end of the negotiation.
Moreover, there is often a fear associated with further negotiation -- "what if they get offended, then they won't do business with us"!
This is such a ludicrous opinion that you want to give folk a shake and say "wake up -- these suppliers are in the business of getting our business".People fear a two-letter word "no". It holds many hostage, because they believe they don't know how to comeback to this retort. People feel embarrassed when someone says no, but in reality, in my mind, no just means find another way.
The one thing you don't do in a negotiation is state an ultimatum "if you don't do this I won't buy from you" -- unless of course you are willing to walk, and never re-engage with this particular company. It is better to probe and discover their business drivers, and carefully, but skillfully peel back to onion of their issues and determine what their bottom-line is and see how it maps to yours.
Beyond the business aspects of this, as Consumer Reports points out you can negotiate everyday, for almost everything. I've negotiated down my cable rates, my phone rates, my internet rates, just by asking how important my business was to these companies. I also ask for some type of discount when I purchase clothing -- if I'm a regular customer, I ask how important it is to this store to retain my loyalty.
In regards to loyalty, I have also recently written
to the bank which has both my personal and business accounts. I am always disturbed when corporations have special promotions to get "new" clients, but take their current and loyal clients for granted. Seeing a most recent promotion which gave new customers an iPod for switching to this bank, I wrote an email, asking what they were going to do for existing and loyal customers.After a couple of emails (never accept the first response) I received $200 credited to my bank account. Not bad for a 1/2 hour work.
1 comment:
This is a tough one.
You lead off with a picture of a used car salesman and immediately suggest negotiating for things. I thought there was an initiative afoot to cease such activity with used car salesmen because as a group, they may not be the most honorable individuals in the world and 'negotiations' with them over the years have tended to highly favor the salesperson.
It's true as a general rule, I do dislike hearing the word "no" and I do dislike offending people. That's true in most cases... with the exceptions of used car salespeople and politicians.
First of all, I don't worry about offending used car salespeople because like politicians, they have hides like a rhinoceros and you can't possibly offend them because they could care less what you think about them. Like politicians, all they care about is getting your money.
I will also admit to being quite fearful when I hear the word "yes" from a used car salesperson because like politicians, if they're agreeing with me it pretty well means I'm in the process of getting royally, involuntarily screwed.
I have heard it is possible to negotiate credit card rates but since I always pay off my credit card balance each month, I never pay any interest so there isn't much to negotiate. In fact, I'm pretty sure the bank hates me because they aren't making any money off me and they'd like to get rid of me. Under those circumstances, I doubt negotiations are ever successful.
Where I live there's only one cable company and one telephone company. I might try them but I suspect they will not be interested in negotiating with me, since I have no alternatives whatsoever. There are also only two local bank branches and I've never heard of either of them offering any sort of incentive to switch banks. They seem to be very happy with their traditional share of captive bank customers
I'm positive you're correct and negotiation is a valuable tool for individuals as well as companies but sometimes the chances of success will depend on physical location. Not everyone lives or runs a business in a vast metropolitan area with significant competition for most everything. Some people live in small places dominated by monopolies and monopolies don't negotiate, simply because they don't feel like it.
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