商務(wù)談判英語:Typical Hardball Tactics (2)

Lowball/Highball

Negotiators using the lowball/highball tactic start with a ridiculously low (or high) opening offer that they know they will never achieve. The theory is that the extreme offer will cause the other party to reevaluate his or her own opening offer and move closer to or beyond their resistance point. For example, one of the authors was in a labor-management negotiation where the union’s first offer was to request a 45 percent salary increase over three years. Given that recent settlements in neighboring universities had been 3 to 4 percent, this qualified as a highball offer!

The risk of using this tactic is that the other party will think negotiating is a waste of time and will stop the process. Even if the other party continues to negotiate after receiving a lowball (or highball) offer, however, it takes a very skilled negotiator to be able to justify the extreme opening offer and to finesse the negotiation back to a point where the other side will be willing to make a major concession toward the outrageous bid.

The best way to deal with a lowball/highball tactic is not to make a counteroffer, but to ask for a more reasonable opening offer from the other party (the union in the preceding example responded to this request by tabling an offer for a 6 percent increase, above the industry average but not qualifying as a highball offer). The reason that requesting a reasonable opening offer is important is because this tactic works in the split second between hearing the other party’s opening offer and the delivery of your first offer. If you give in to the natural tendency to change your opening offer because it would be embarrassing to start negotiations so far apart, or because the other party’s extreme opening makes you rethink where the bargaining zone may lie, then you have fallen victim to this tactic. When this happens, you have been “anchored” by the other party’s extreme first offer.

Good preparation for the negotiation is a critical defense against this tactic. Proper planning will help you know the general range for the value of the item under discussion and allow you to respond verbally with one of several different strategies: (1) insisting that the other party start with a reasonable opening offer and refusing to negotiate further until he or she does; (2) stating your understanding of the general market value of the item being discussed, supporting it with facts and figures, and, by doing so, demonstrating to the other party that you won’t be tricked; (3) threatening to leave the negotiation, either briefly or for good, to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the other party for using this tactic; and (4) responding with an extreme counteroffer to send a clear message you won’t be anchored by an extreme offer from the other party.