The Negotiation Guru

When you start drilling for information, be careful not to assume. You should never create your own assumptions.

Do not assume what you’ve heard is the truth. But you should not start creating your own assumption too.

Target:  “The car design is really important to me.”

You:     “Oh, you should not be concerned with the design of the car. The engine is really powerful! It has a 3.6 litre V8 engine, producing over 500kW of power and accelerates from 0-100km/h in 5 secs!”

Target (in his head): “Who cares?”

You are making your own assumptions that he should be concerned with the performance. What if your target is really more concern with the car design and not the performance? You will be tuned in to the wrong channel. In negotiation, this principle works the same.

Never assume. Always ask!

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Rapport, Resistance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.