Negotiating face to face is very rare in the real estate world. Most of the time buyers and sellers have agents who act as the intermediaries. Even if the agents for the buyer and the seller were sitting at a table, neither is empowered to act without consulting their clients. Most real estate negotiations are extended affairs that take days and involve plenty of discussion.<\/p>\n
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Buying a car is a different experience – the buyer is face to face with the seller. Or at least someone working for the seller who is empowered to make pricing decisions. It’s a whole different style of negotiating, and as I recently learned, doubles as a graduate level course in manipulation.<\/p>\n
Here are my 5 favorite techniques that the sales associate and the business manager used to try to influence me, some subtle and others quite overt:<\/p>\n
5. Good Cop, Bad Cop<\/strong>: The sales associate started out as the good cop, with the business manager as the bad cop, which is traditional. Later the business manager transitioned to the good side and the “owner” became the bad cop. It’s a classic strategy that everyone knows, and is fun to play along with.<\/p>\n 4. Silent Treatment<\/strong>: After the business manager had joined us around the negotiating table, they tried the silent treatment on me. I’m a huge fan of the silent treatment as a strategy because it’s simple and often effective – some people get really rattled by just being quiet. I enjoyed the quiet for a moment, meeting their gaze, but then had to call their bluff by moving to wrap up the discussion.<\/p>\n 3. Thick Permanent Marker<\/strong>: The business manager wrote the dealer’s official counter offers using a thick green marker and large font. It was intended to look very final – that’s the lowest price they can offer. As an added bonus, he also wrote numbers out to the ones place, which was supposed to signal that his counter had much more careful thought behind it than my bids that ended in three zeros. I like these techniques because they are much more subtle attempts to influence than the others.<\/p>\n 2. Isolate & Pressure<\/strong>: They really wanted to keep me sitting at the negotiation table free from distractions. With no communication with the outside world, they could try to control what information I had available to me. That wasn’t very successful since I consulted my iPad each time the sales associate visited the business manager, but whatever. What won the prize was when they actually discouraged me from calling Amy, saying something like, “If she trusts and respects you, then she’ll be fine with you agreeing to a deal right now without consulting her.” Are they specifically trying to cause marital strife? I wonder how many angry spouses they have to deal with?<\/p>\n 1. Appeal to my Vanity<\/strong>: There were two models I was considering, one slightly larger than the other. They wanted me to buy the larger car, presumably because it cost a little more and they would make more money. I would shift the conversation to the smaller one when they were signaling that they couldn’t reduce the price of the larger one any more. The first couple times that convinced them to lower the price of the larger car a little more and keep the discussion going. But on one occasion they instead tried to sell me on paying more for the larger car because it was the “big boy car.” They went on to explain how I would make a much better impression if I “rolled up” in the larger car. That was easily the highlight of my negotiation. First of all, it was a bogus argument because I’m confident that 99% of people either wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two cars or wouldn’t care. But what really amused me was the absurdity of actually hearing them say “big boy car.” Does this nonsense actually work?<\/p>\n The day after all of this happened I made a quick list of all the ways they tried to manipulate me, and got up to 17. Just about everything about my visit was geared towards closing the deal before I walked out the door. Both the sales associate and business manager were good at their jobs, and they succeeded. I’m confident they made money, otherwise they wouldn’t have sold me the car, but am also confident that I paid a fair price.<\/p>\n The best part of these techniques is that they can be played in reverse. The next time I go car shopping I’m going to have Amy be the bad cop that I have to consult by phone, I’m going to definitely use the silent treatment first, I’m going to bring a giant red marker to write my bids with, and I’m going to sell them on how great they’ll feel when they close the deal. <\/p>\n With mind games like these, how can car shopping not be fun?!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Negotiating face to face is very rare in the real estate world. Most of the time buyers and sellers have agents who act as the intermediaries. Even if the agents for the buyer and the seller were sitting at a table, neither is empowered to act without consulting their clients. Most real estate negotiations are extended affairs that take days and involve plenty of discussion. Buying a car is a different experience – the buyer<\/p>\n