like this in a negotiation is to discover what they do not
know and supply that information.
MISTAKE #2: THEY ARE CONSTRAINED
In any negotiation where your counterpart is acting wobbly,
there exists a distinct possibility that they have things they
can’t do but aren’t eager to reveal. Such constraints can
make the sanest counterpart seem irrational. The other side
might not be able to do something because of legal advice,
or because of promises already made, or even to avoid
setting a precedent.
Or they may just not have the power to close the deal.
That last situation is one that a client of mine faced as he
was trying to land Coca-Cola as a client for his marketing
firm.
The guy had been negotiating a deal for months and it
was getting on to November. He was petrified that if he
didn’t close it before the calendar year ended he would have
to wait for Coca-Cola to set a new budget and he might lose
the client.
The problem was that his contact had suddenly stopped
responding. So we told him to send a version of our classic
email for nonresponders, the one that always works: “Have
you given up on finalizing this deal this year?”
Then something weird happened. The Coca-Cola contact
didn’t respond to the perfect email. What was up?
This was superficially quite irrational, but the contact
had been a straight-up guy until then. We told our client this