Let’s imagine for a moment you are a Quantity Surveyor
working for a firm based in Cork and you are looking to
agree on final figures with your building contractors based
in Dublin.
You get off the phone with your contractor after agreeing to
meet that afternoon and you jump into your car and start
your three hour journey to Dublin.
After parking up you get into the contractors office only to
be told he is running late and won't be back in the office
till 3pm. Frustrated you take a seat and wait.
45 minutes later he arrives back in and apologies for your
inconvenience. You are beckoned into a warm, stuffy meeting
room ready to do business - or so you think.
As time goes by you realise more and more that it will take
you most of the evening to get home, what with traffic and
whatever time you will finish in the contractor's office.
He mentions to you the air conditioning unit and casually
mentions the cost is now at 45 thousand euro. A big
difference from your 30 thousand euro estimate. He begins to
get agitated and may even raise his voice. You have
negotiated fairly successfully with him so far today but now
he is applying pressure on you for 45k knowing you want to
get going home. Because of this you are more likely to give
into the pressure as you don't want to be travelling all
evening on your time.
But you are smart and know he is charging too much for the
air conditioning in your opinion. So you stand your ground.
Unfortunately for you the contractor tells you he can't
budge off the price, he wants to but his boss would be so
unhappy and angry with him. To add insult to injury the boss
is out of town and won't be back until next week. You have
two options. Settle the deal with him today for his 45k
figure, or delay the deal and wait till next week when the
boss is back.
Now you don't want to go through all this again: the
journey, the waiting time, the stuffy office and that's not
to mention the horrible coffee you drank whilst waiting for
him!
So you agree to the 45k just to get out of there and get the
deal moving.
You have fallen for the classic Higher Reference gambit.
Did you spot where it was?
The contractor would have loved to have gone lower but the
boss wouldn't sanction it and the fact he wasn't there in
the office made it more difficult to do anything about it.
He applied time pressure on you, making you wait for him to
arrive. Then he knew you wanted to get going back to Cork as
he has done the journey many times too and knows exactly how
you are feeling. You are more flexible in your negotiations
under these circumstances.
How do you Counteract this gambit.
I cannot stress this enough. When agreeing to go to the
contractor's office, make sure they agree upfront that they
can do the deal with you today.
You might say something like:
"If I come and visit you today, is there any reason why you
cannot make necessary changes to the contract if we need to
make these changes? Is there a chance your boss will need to
step in and call the shots? I am sure you can do this, but I
just need to make sure as I don't want to waste more of your
time coming back again"
If the contractor tells you he can make the changes, then
when the negotiations start and he needs to speak to his
boss, you can say:
"But Tom, you indicated to me on the phone that you were the
one with the authority to make the judgement on this. Why
are you pretending you need to speak to the boss? Surely you
have the power now to take care of this. After all you are
the senior contractor here aren't you?
Appeal to his ego. He may say something like "I guess you
are right. The boss normally agrees to what I say."
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