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www.businessenglishonline.net

2

POWER AND THE PERSONAL TOUCH

relationship-building as a persuasive tool in negotiations

The persuasive power of relationship-building in

negotiations was first brought home to me some

years ago in a carpet shop in a winding backstreet

of Istanbul. I had been taken there by my tour-

guide as the last stop on a whirlwind sightseeing

tour of the city and, though I made it clear from

the outset that I had no interest whatsoever in

buying anything, I was immediately given the full

treatment by the sales staff, who, it turned out,

were friends of my guide. No purchase was

necessary they assured me, as I was plied with

sweets and soft drinks and told at great length the

colourful history of the Turkish carpet industry.

Scores of carpets both new and antique in rich

crimsons, dark golds and smoky blues were

theatrically unfurled before me as I sat sipping

coffee after coffee with my guide. After half an

hour of this, I was starting to feel guilty that I was

taking up so much of their time with no prospect

of a sale. By the end of the ‘show’ we all shook

hands like old friends, and I barely escaped

shelling out three months’ salary on a fabulous

blue and gold rug that was straight out of Aladdin.

‘All things being equal, people will buy
from a friend. All things being not quite so
equal, people will still buy from a friend.’

Mark McCormack,

What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School

Give and take

What those Turkish carpet salesmen knew, and

what every good negotiator should know, is that

making the effort to build a relationship with your

prospective customer in a negotiation, even in a

simple one-off transaction, will pay dividends no

clever ‘sales tactic’ can hope to achieve. Indeed,

they were using one of the most powerful

purchase-motivators known to man - the ‘Rule of

Reciprocation’. By overwhelming me with their

hospitality, they made me feel almost ashamed not

to buy. But there was no ‘hard sell’ and,

remarkably, at no point was money actually

mentioned.

‘When money is at stake, never be the first
to mention sums.’

Sheikh Ahmed Yamani, former Saudi Oil Minister

In fact, I must confess that, although I got away

without buying a carpet, I was later taken by my guide

to another friend’s jewellery shop where I ended up

buying several silver rings almost out of a sense of

obligation. These were masterful negotiators!

Haggling isn’t negotiation

Since that almost very expensive trip to Turkey,

however, I have noticed that in many of the

negotiation roleplays I conduct in my English classes,

the learners seem to bypass this relationship-building

procedure altogether, dispense with the niceties and

get straight down to business. Indeed, the rolecards

they are working from often encourage this hard-

nosed approach, detailing only objectives and nothing

at all about their opponents’ motivation. So my

learners always seem to enter the bargaining phase far

too soon and, as a result, frequently get bogged down

in a kind of tug-of-war over price, discounts and

delivery times. Convinced they’ll meet resistance

from the opposing team, they barely listen to the other

side’s proposals before they leap in with counter-

proposals of their own.

‘Don’t negotiate with yourself. Have the
patience to wait for the other fellow to make a
counter-offer after you’ve made one’

Richard Smith, Partner at Smith, McWorter & Pacher

Cultural factors

Part of the problem is cultural. John Mole, author of

the seminal text on doing business across culture,

Mind Your Manners, has mapped out different

nationalities’ approaches to negotiation using two sets

of complementary values: ‘power’ and ‘relationship’.

In terms of power, Mole divides cultures into those

who like to keep power and see all negotiations as

win/lose and those who prefer to share power and

embrace the style of negotiating now universally

known as win/win. In terms of relationship, he notes

that negotiators either give more importance to the

transaction itself or to the potential partnership with

their opponents. ‘Transaction negotiators’ think short-

term and easily get hung up on price. ‘Partnership

negotiators’, on the other hand, are much more

concerned with developing a long-term working

relationship and building for the future.

Predators and partners

Mole’s ‘Deal Map’ therefore describes four basic

negotiation types: the ‘Predator’ who wants to beat

their opponent and has a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to

the deal; the ‘Controller’ who also wants to remain in

charge but thinks longer term; the ‘trader’ who enjoys

the cut and thrust of haggling on an equal footing but

thinks short term; and the ‘partner’ who puts their

ongoing relationship with their opposite number

firmly above power:

I often find it useful to ask my learners where they

would place themselves and their culture on the map.

Frequently, they place themselves in the ‘Partner’

category, even when their behaviour in simulated

negotiations clearly paints a far more ‘predatory’

picture. Readers who are interested can find out more

about the Deal Map by logging on to

www.johnmole.com.

keep

predator

controller

share

POWER

transaction RELATIONSHIP partnership

trader

partner

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www.businessenglishonline.net

3

The power of questions

Of course, a key part of both relationship-building and

deal-making is asking questions.

‘Why and How are words so important
that they cannot be too often used.’

Napoleon Bonaparte

The unhelpful battle of wills I have so often seen my

learners engaging in when practising the language of

negotiation is usually the result of seeing the process

of negotiation as two sides pulling towards the

middle. This is sometimes called ‘positional

negotiating’. Had my learners shown more interest in

the other side by asking them questions, they might

have been better able to break deadlock and generate

new options. This is generally known as ‘interest-

based negotiation’.

Positional v interest-based

negotiation

In positional negotiating both sides set out their intial

positions and then tend to get tangled up in arguments

and self-justifications as they try to persuade the other

side that their demands are reasonable. The usual

result is a grudging compromise or, worse, a complete

breakdown in the negotiations.

In interest-based negotiation, however, the negotiators

try to find out the underlying needs and goals behind

their opponents’ demands by asking probing

questions. They don’t start off with the ideal outcome

of the negotiation clearly in focus. They search for it

during the negotiation itself.

‘Skilled negotiators ask more than twice as
many questions as average negotiators.’

The Huthwaite Research Group

The Mars Bar

Take the case of the woman who goes into a

sweetshop to buy ten Mars Bars. ‘That’ll be seven

euros, please’ says the shop assistant. ‘I’ll give you

five,’ says the woman. The shop assistant smiles at the

joke and holds his hand out for the seven euros. The

woman promptly gives him five. Annoyed now, the

shop assistant points out that she’s two euros short.

‘No,’ says the woman. ‘I’m buying ten, aren’t I? So I

expect a discount’. ‘Look,’ says the assistant, ‘I’m not

prepared to argue with you. The price is the price,

right? Take it or leave it’. ‘Five-fifty,’ says the woman.

‘And that’s my final offer’. By now a queue has

started to form at the till.

At this point the manager is called for and the whole

thing ends in unpleasantness.

Had the assistant only asked, ‘But why, may I ask, are

you trying to get me to reduce the price?’ he would

have heard the woman say, ‘Well, you don’t think I

want ten Mars Bars for myself, do you? They’re for

my dogs. They love them. But I’m not paying this

price for dog treats.’

On hearing this, the assistant might have answered:

‘Oh, I see. Well, that’s different. I can’t sell you these

for less than the recommended price. But I’ve got a

box of damaged ones somewhere I could let you have

for thirty cents each. Your dogs won’t mind if they’re

a bit squashed, will they?’

Result: one happy customer, three happy Rottweilers

and a box of unsaleable goods successfully got rid of.

Classroom activity: The Last

One in the Store

(see page 7 for Briefing Cards)

Win/win

Win/win negotiation has become a bit of a cliché and,

in some situations, it clearly is neither possible nor

desirable. But it is the preferred style of most

professional negotiators these days and, in terms of

language, will require a much greater emphasis on

problem solving, idea generating and rapport building

than on demand, counter-demand and trade-off. Two

things you may find helpful in setting up roleplays

are: 1) give your learners plenty of time to prepare for

the negotiation (up to double the time they’ll actually

need to negotiate), and 2) insist they spend at least a

third of the negotiation showing solidarity with the

other team and exploring each other’s needs through

careful questioning.

‘In a successful negotiation everybody wins.’

Gerard Nierenberg, US President of The Negotiation Institute

Mark Powell

In Company author

This activity is designed to raise awareness of the

importance of relationship-building and interest-

based questioning in effective negotiation.

Put your learners into pairs and give them the

briefing cards on page 7. These are not so much

rolecards as the story that leads up to the

negotiation they are going to take part in. The

information need not be memorised, only

understood.

The basic scenario is this: two people desperately

want to buy a particular toy for their child this

Christmas. For various reasons, they’ve left it

rather late to buy it and by the time they get to the

toyshop there’s only one left. They both grab hold

of it at the same time and only one of them can

have it.

As your learners play the parts of complete

strangers in this roleplay, they tend to take no

notice whatsoever of their opponent’s interests.

This is fair enough, but by concentrating on only

one objective, they reduce the whole encounter to

a single-issue negotiation with little room for

manoeuvre. This makes it a simple zero-sum game

- if one of them gets what they want, the other one

doesn’t, and vice-versa.

In my experience, learners get very competitive

during this activity, sometimes becoming

aggressive and trying to just grab the box off the

other person. Some give in completely, deciding it

simply isn’t worth the hassle. Others may resort to

emotional blackmail, inventing all sorts of reasons

why their kid is more deserving than the other kid.

Step in after a few minutes and stop the negotiation

and pass a piece of extra information to each

learner. This tells them that the circumstances

remain exactly the same, except that the two of

them are both close friends. This, of course,

changes everything and they will start the

negotiation again with a totally different attitude.

With a long-term relationship to protect, they’ll be

looking to find a mutually acceptable solution

rather than simply to beat their opponent. If they

ask sufficient questions, they may also discover

that only one of their children has actually said they

want the toy in question.

Allow ample time for post-task discussion and, if

you can, take notes during the two short roleplays

for comparative language feedback.