Negotiation Manipulation Moves: Smart And Acceptable Manipulation Tactics You Can Employ To Turn The Negotiation Odds In Your Favor

98 Pages·2014·1.26 MB·English

by  Shani

Negotiation Manipulation Moves

Smart And Acceptable Manipulation
Tactics You Can Employ To Turn The
Negotiation Odds In Your Favor

By Asaf Shani
Editor: Melissa Javellana
Copyright © 2014 by Asaf Shani
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording,
or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission
of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Books by Asaf Shani
Conflicts and Negotiations series

Leadership & management series

Children's books: Jade's Life Skills Series
Table of Contents
Foreword
Manipulation – Isn't It Bad?
What is manipulation?
How negotiation works
Old-school manipulation – A no-no
Drawing the line
Are you built for it?
What This Book Has To Offer You
Orientation Signs
Two Inspiring Stories About Manipulation
Listening
Cognitive Dissonance Manipulation
Open-ended Questions
The Affirmation Manipulation
Anchoring – Or Should I Say Hooking?
Reciprocity
The Power of A Casual Remark
Using Reason
Transparency
Silence
Word Association
The Illusion of Choice
Connecting The Dots
Playing On Emotional Memory
Mental Accounting
Summary
Foreword
This book is meant to make you a better negotiator by improving your
negotiation manipulation moves.
Cards on the table: Manipulation implies trickery, unfairness, and exploitation
and no one would like to conduct, or at least admit that he conducts,
manipulative negotiation.
For this very reason I admit that after I finished writing this book, I struggled
with the question: Should I include the word 'manipulation' in its title? Why,
then, did I include it? Because I want to be honest about what this book contains,
though don’t be quick to judge. The manipulation I discuss here may be very
different what you are used to thinking.
I thought about putting the word ‘fair’ or ‘ethical’ before ‘manipulation’ in order
to make the book more appealing but I decided against them because they
sounded to me like "putting lipstick on a pig".
Because I am trying to create a paradigm shift regarding the way you perceive
manipulation and, after all, the book is all about manipulation techniques used in
negotiation, I finally decided to take off any make-up and call the book as I did.
As my Polish grandfather used to say "vhat the hell".
In this book I claim, and try to demonstrate with real life scenarios, that not only
that there is such thing as ethical or fair manipulation. We all use manipulation
whether we like to admit it or not. Most importantly, manipulations are vital in
the negotiations we face through life. 'Vital' because by cleverly using
manipulation moves you'll be able to create long lasting solutions, solutions the
other side can feel good with and hence bring stability and facilitate continuity to
your relationship with the other side.
I will try to convince you in the book that the question is not whether you should
use manipulation moves in your negotiations but rather a rhetorical question:
Can you allow yourself not to use them?
As in most of my books, the whole discussion in this books revolves around
human characteristics that lay dormant, hidden beneath our consciousnesses.
These characteristics can be activated in the service of our psych in order to
manipulate ourselves and then the people with whom we negotiate with.
My claim is that pondering the issue of manipulation, understanding what it
means exactly and how it is used, will help you better define your ethical
manipulation boundaries, arm you with understanding and tools to defend
yourself against manipulations done on you and overall make you a far better
negotiator.
My promise to you is that when you are done with this book, not only will your
negotiation ability be sharper, enabling you to get what you want while keeping
the other side satisfied more than you are doing now. You'll be a more ethical
negotiator, more accurate in what you do in the course of your daily
negotiations.
Manipulation – Isn't It Bad?
Imagine you are in the following situation:
An important client calls you, asking you to take 5% off your product's price.
"It's been a tough year and we really need to cut our costs," he explains his
request.
You have a long and intimate acquaintance with this client and so you were
anticipating this call. You've done your homework and your manager already
approved even a higher reduction rate of 7%.
What will you do/say to your client?
A) Give him what he asked – a 5% reduction;

B) Light up the angel's halo above your head and tell him you can give him

more than he asked, offering the 7% reduction; or
C) Offer him less than he wanted, say only 4% reduction?

I've presented this scenario in many of my workshops – whether the workshop
was on negotiation skills or on selling techniques, with a varied audience of
businessmen, professionals and managers in organizations – and all rejected the
7% option.
Most of them explained rejecting the 7% option by saying that their business is a
business for profit and therefore there is no justification for cutting their profit
margins for the sake of 'good deeds day'. "The client asked for a 5% reduction,
so why give him more?' was the common remark.
Indeed, that's an acceptable point of view. Although, sometimes such
counterintuitive generosity towards clients might pay itself off in the future
tenfold (as it may trigger reciprocity or resonate as a positive emotional memory
– two manipulations that I'll discuss in detail later on), for now, let's regard this
tactic in the current discussion.
Yet, there is a more valid reason for withholding the 7% option from your client,
a reason that transcends whatever client compensation approach you hold, and
that is retaining you client satisfaction.
Step into the client’s shoes for a minute and notice how you feel when your
account manager says to you, "You know, you are a valued client of ours and
hence, we are willing to give you a higher reduction rate than what you asked –
we're offering to take off an extra 2% and give you a total of a 7% reduction!"
Pause for a second. Let what you've just heard echo inside your head and see
how you feel. I bet that you would have been happy for about 5 minutes, perhaps
even less, but then, the following annoying thought would have probably
crawled into your head: "If they were willing to give me an extra discount, what
does that mean about their marginal profit per unit? Doesn’t it mean their profit
is BIG, TOO big, if they are being so generous? They’re ripping us off!"
So, instead of making your client satisfied by giving him more than he wanted,
and in so doing cutting your marginal profit, he ends up feeling cheated!
How come? Because as the above simple example demonstrates, people are
more sensitive to the how than to the what. This means that the same act
conducted in two different ways will yield two different, sometime totally
opposite, results.
So, in order to make your client feel good with whatever reduction you decide to
give him, if any, and regardless of the amount, a manipulative tactic is required
in order to make him perceive the outcome positively.
This is exactly where manipulations play an important role in human interactions
in general and in negotiations in particular. They create a positive ‘how’ which is
essential to whether or not there will be a closure in the first place, how close
this closure will be to what you expected and also how the future engagements,
if there is a potential or necessity for such engagements in the future, will look
like. I'll elaborate on this crucial idea in the next section.