EMPATHY IN NEGOTIATION
“When I am getting ready to speak with a man, I spend one-third of
my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say, and
two-thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN“Whenever two people meet, there are six people present. There
is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other
person sees him, and each man as he really is.”
—WILLIAM JAMESIndividuals often carry hidden agendas into the negotiation process.
There are the issues they tell you that matter, and there are the tacit issues
that really matter. In my negotiations with a large national firm, I offered to
give them the price they wanted, but I retained control of the process. While
they never actually came out and said that they like to have total, in-house
control over all processes, that attitude was implied in our conversations.
I was later able to get a higher price for my products when I agreed to
grant them total control over the process, which is what they wanted all
along (though it was not brought up as a focal point in the negotiation).
The only way to detect the pivotal points that define winning or losing in
negotiation is by having our emotional radar tuned in to tone and nonver-
bal responses—by asking good questions and listening with vigilance.
Many of us in the sales profession are, by nature, not very good listen-
ers. We like to talk. Often we simply like to hear the sound of our voices
waxing eloquent over some point, telling some story, or opining about a
matter. Consequently, many of us have failed to nurture good listening
habits and are chronic interrupters. We just have to speak our piece and
cannot wait to hear out the other party.
If we do not let the other party completely finish their thoughts or if
we respond in mid paragraph, however, we may lose the opportunity to
learn something that could be valuable. They may have been ready to re-
veal something about their agenda, their emotions, or their needs—but we
just cut them off. Valuable, critical information has just been lost, just as if
it had been run through a shredder. Yet it was our impertinence that did
the shredding.
If we overcommit to convincing our opponents to concede on our pet
points, we fail to pick up telling nonverbal and tonal clues—responses where
words don’t match tone and body language—and further cement their
238 SELLING WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE