Leo Reilly - How To Outnegotiate Anyone

HOW TO

OUTNEGOTIATE

ANYONE

HOW TO

OUTNEGOTIATE

ANYONE

(Even a Car Dealer!)

by

LEO REILLY

ADAMS MEDIA CORPORATION

Avon, Massachusetts

Copyright 1994, Leo Reilly. All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, or by any means,
without the permission of the publisher. Exceptions are made for
brief excerpts to be used in published reviews.

Published by

Adams Media, an F+W Publications Company
57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322. U.S.A.

ISBN 13: 978-1-55850-283-3

ISBN 10: 1-55850-283-1

Printed in Canada.

T S R Q P O

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reilly, Leo.

How to outnegotiate anyone, even a car dealer! / by Leo Reilly.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 1-55850-283-1

1. Negotiation in business. I. Title. II. Title: How to outnegotiate anyone, even a car dealer!

HD58.6.R45 1993

302.3dc20

93-34576
CIP

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the
American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations

A Note on the Personal Pronoun.

To avoid sexism without resorting to such tiresome constructions as he/she, his or hers, and so on, I have used the masculine and feminine pronouns aribitrarily throughout this book, with about as many hes as shes.

This book is available at quantity discounts for bulk purchases.
For information, call 1-800-289-0963.

Visit our home page at http://www.adamsmedia.com

To Faith, who has patiently endured my company for the
past 15 years with good humor, grace under fire and a
remarkable ability to ignore the
cloud for the silver lining.

Contents

Why You Should Never Take a Win-Win Negotiating Book onto a Car Lot

Chapter One

If You Absolutely, Positively Have to Have Something Today, Buy It Tomorrow If You Insist On Having It Today, Know What You Want and Be Prepared to Pay For It Why You Should Never Disclose Your Deadline What to do When You Have Already Disclosed Your Deadline Why Car Dealers Will Never Let You Off the Lot Alive

Chapter Two

Lower Their Shields and Get Their Swords on the Table If They Dont Think a Deal Is Possible, It Isnt Nine Ways to Calm Them Down and Mellow Them Out The Banana Pellet Theory of Negotiating Nobody Likes to Look Stupid for a Prolonged Period of Time

Chapter Three

The Ill See You In Hell Syndrome Why Dwelling On Deadlocked Issues Is Incredibly Stupid (And Why Everybody Does It) Everything Isnt Negotiable When to Deadlock and When Not To This is my last and final offer

Chapter Four

The Opening Offer: Blow It and Youre Dead Wrong-Way Boul-wares Fatal Mistake Four Opening Gambits The Cost of Opening First One Time to Open First Capitulation (Killing the Sticker Price) Opening Offers to Avoid Making Ill just take this back to the manager and get it approved

Chapter Five

How to Determine Your Status Why Sellers Bow Deeper (and What They Do About It)

Chapter Six

Nibbling the Sellers Soft Underbelly Loss Leaders The Straw Man Sellers Closing Tactics Get It Cheaper In The City

Chapter Seven

The More You Know Now, The Less Youll Have to Find Out Later Silence is Golden Never Ask Close-Ended Questions Unless You Already Know the Answer

Chapter Eight

The Ultimate Intimidation Tactic Zen and the Art of Negotiating

The Negotiators Sucker Punch

Chapter Nine

A Word on Lawyers and Negotiating Returning a Lemon Settle the Bad Cases Early and the Good Cases on the Courthouse Steps

How to Buy a Car in Less Than Five Minutes, Below Dealer Cost

Appendix A

I Paid Too Much Why Did I Buy This? How Do I Get Out of the Deal?

Appendix B

First, the Bad News Now, the Good News And in Any Case ...

Appendix C

Profile of an Effective Negotiating Team How Do You Conduct a Caucus?

Appendix D

Tips for Negotiating by Telephone

I would like to make a toast and give a tip of the hat to all of the people who have helped in one way or another, to make this book possible. They know who they are but it doesnt hurt to name them anyway. I would like to give a special thanks to my associate Nancy Mickulich, who has helped me in ways she will never know to get this book out, my booking agents, Sue Smith and Margaret Kamamlian, who kept me in clover while I was writing the manuscript, Steve Mandel who unwittingly became a central turning point in my life and has always been a valued friend, my agent Frank Weimann of the Literary Group, my editor Brandon Toropov who gave me encouragement and guidance, not to mention a badly needed prod from time to time, and Kathleen Becker who cleaned up my tortured prose. I would also like to thank my two beloved children Emily and David for being a source of inspiration to me and for keeping their chocolate covered sticky hands away from the manuscript for what must have seemed an eternity. Final thanks must go to my stockbroker and friend of 25 years, Mr. Brad Baker, for injecting a sense of humor when it was most needed.

Introduction

Why You Should Never Take a Win-Win
Negotiating Book onto a Car Lot

For 15 years, it was my job to negotiate for people. As a trial lawyer, I negotiated everything from the selling price of a business, to the payment plans a debtor would undertake in bankruptcy. I negotiated the mergers of businesses, the dissolution of partnerships, and how much audited taxpayers would pay to the IRS. And, like almost every lawyer or businessperson I have ever met, I did this with no formal instruction on how to negotiate. My entire experience was basically limited to trial-and-error and an occasional seminar that tended to raise more questions than it answered. Negotiating is a fundamental business skill, yet most of us are ignorant of how to handle the most basic negotiations. Even people who are known as professional negotiators are usually just as ignorant of the process. The negotiations between Eastern Airlines and the mechanics union (discussed in chapter 3) prove that even the most tested and experienced negotiators can make mistakes with disastrous consequences, mistakes that were easy to avoid but embarrassingly predictable. Today, largely because of these mistakes, Eastern Airlines no longer exists and the airlines mechanics have lost their jobs.

The fact is, Americans do not know how to negotiate. This is especially true when it comes to bargaining the price and terms of a product, whether the parties involved are well-paid businesspersons running corporations or homeowners negotiating the sale of their residence. Our inability to effectively bargain is not the result of our being less intelligent as the Japanese or less street smart as the Iranians, as some would have us believe. Rather, it is the result of a basic condition.

Americans, more than any other people in the world, live in a highly industrialized consumer-oriented society. Other nations may be richer than us (on a per capita basis Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and a dozen other oil-rich nations are wealthier), or more industrialized (Japans infrastructure is arguably superior to ours in many respects), but no other nation is so thoroughly oriented to the consumer, or has been for such a long period of time. We have the luxury of being able to purchase standardized goods at standardized prices. In fact, the hallmark of a highly industrialized society is this push to standardize everything. For example, if you walk into a grocery store to purchase a box of com flakes, you will notice that all brands come in similarly sized boxes, and their quality is fairly consistent. Furthermore, when you check their various prices, you will notice they are all priced within a narrow price range. So when you get to the check-out, the price is non-negotiable, because there is really nothing left to negotiate. The price and quality of this product (along with its package size and bulk weight) have already been negotiated for you at the manufacturing and distribution levels.