could mean only one thing: that the guy had given up on
closing the deal by the end of the year, but he didn’t want to
admit it. There had to be some constraint.
With this knowledge in hand, we had our client dig
deep. After a batch of phone calls and emails he tracked
down someone who knew his contact. And it turned out we
had been right: the contact’s division had been in chaos for
weeks, and in the midst of corporate infighting he had
completely lost influence. Not surprisingly, he was
embarrassed to admit it. That’s why he was avoiding my
client.
To put it simply, he had major constraints.
MISTAKE #3: THEY HAVE OTHER INTERESTS
Think back to William Griffin, the first man ever to kill a
hostage on deadline.
What the FBI and police negotiators on the scene simply
did not know was that his main interest was not negotiating
a deal to release the hostages for money. He wanted to be
killed by a cop. Had they been able to dig up that hidden
interest, they might have been able to avoid some of that
day’s tragedy.
The presence of hidden interests isn’t as rare as you
might think. Your counterpart will often reject offers for
reasons that have nothing to do with their merits.
A client may put off buying your product so that their
calendar year closes before the invoice hits, increasing his
chance for a promotion. Or an employee might quit in the