商务英语谈判对话 04-15

Chapter 15

Dream Chips or Give Away Chips虚张声势的谈判筹码

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Bob:It's good to meet you, Jane. Is this your first visit to the States?

Jane: It's nice to meet you too, Bob. No, I've been here a few times in the past.

....(详细对话见 Disk 3-3)

For Your Information(背景介绍)

Thus far, all the bargaining chips have been real items that actually meant something. I mean the side that asked really thought the requsts were reasonble, and expected to get them. Thus far, the parties bargained in good faith, and every request was made in earnest. To understand the next section, you need a little backgroud.

The way negotiations work is you give up something for every point you win, and all the issues on the table are credible. The next step is asking for more than you need and allowing yourself to be pushed back to what you wanted in the first place. It's called puffing, and it's an old tactic, tried and true. The puffing up demands to the point they became ridiculous had been tried from time to time but it never works. The other side sees right through the scheme, calls you on it and it's over.

For unrealistic puffing to work, you have to do more than just act as if the issues were valuable. You have to make them valuable. You have to convince the other side you're telling the truth. The problem is how do you do that when the other team knows the playing field as well as you do ? To make it work, you need some convincing play-acting and you have to do your homework.

If the other side tries to run this tactic, you can expect some very convincing arguments to justify their ridiculous demands. So convincing that you may even start to believe it. Well, that's what the cover story was designed to do. Don't fall for it.

The first time they tried this ploy; okay it worked. The other side dismissed the demands as false and without merit. They said okay to stop wasting time and tried to move on to serious discussion. But, instead of letting it go and moving on, they came up with credible arguments supporting their requests, for which their opponents had no reply. The other side was caught flat-footed; they'd been blindsided by the ploy,and won big time.

Now, nearly all big league ngotiations use them,and weeks, even months are wasted peeling away the false demands. Now, it's a standard time waster at the start of negotiations where you trade your dream chips for theirs. This tactic is most effective when the two sides have no place to go, like in a labor negotiation where the two sides have no choice but to work with each other. Okay, fall for the deception.

When I mentioned this to my Business English students, they became very interested. The tactic was used on them, and they didn't understand what was going on, nor did they know what to do. It never occured to them the points were give away-points made up to be traded-because there were justifying arguments. They negotiated them just like they were valid points.

There's a simple defense for this tactic that works like a charm in a sales negotiation. All you have to do is say "kay, we'll go elsewhere", and start to leave. If they don't offer a large concession, I suggest you walk away.

A friend once said to me, "I can afford to walk away from a lot of good deals and I lose nothing, but a potential profit. True, I won't make anything , but I still have what I need to do other deals. However, if I make one bad deal I can lose it all, and I can't afford."