The Negotiation Guru

Recently, I was asked to negotiate on behalf of a good friend of mine with a programmer from Myanmar. It was a deal that my friend was hoping to clinch and was afraid that their relationship would be strained if they reach an impasse. We discussed this for many hours online and did lots of research. We wanted to be fully prepared for the negotiation.

The programmer is probably an introvert. He speaks in a low mellow tone. Everything went on smoothly at the beginning. He did not negotiate even a single term of the issues we listed. Before he put down the phone, he said “Alright, this is fantastic. I really like what you have proposed to me. Let me get back to you on this.”

I never heard from him again. He disappeared.

Yesterday, my friend from Vietnam was complaining to me about this birthday party he was invited to.

“I had a lot of things to do and I had to turn down my meeting with my team because of the party!”

“Why didn’t you say no to the person who invited you?”

“In my culture, it’s considered rude to turn down someone’s offer.”

I got a slight hunch that this might be the reason why the programmer from Myanmar did not just turned down my proposal on the phone. He could have done so but he thought it might be rude to do so.

Remember: In different cultures, people negotiate differently. Never assume everything’s homogenous at the negotiating table. Be very sensitive to your target’s culture. Document everything if possible.