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Don't Move Until You Know What the Other Side Wants
Tips from Preston Michie, The Negotiation Mentor

I’ve seen negotiations where the other side sometimes tries to handle both sides of the negotiation. The conversation goes something like this: “I know I’m asking $3,000, but I’m offering to sell you the pickup for $2,000. I know you wanted the engine repaired, but I just can’t do that. I would consider fixing the brakes.”

Not only did the Seller bargain against himself in this example (never do that), but Buyer would have paid him $2,500 for the truck and not asked to fix the brakes. Buyer didn’t know the engine needed work. By making assumptions about Buyer before asking, Seller unnecessarily handed Buyer valuable information that cost Seller money.

People wrongly assume that the other side is thinking about things the same way you are. I call this the “Mirror Image Assumption,” which is the assumption that the Buyer is after exactly what the Seller is selling. This isn’t always the case, even for cars.

A few years ago I was moving during an extremely rainy winter to a new country home with mud for a yard. I needed a four wheel drive pickup truck to deal with the mud.

The seller of a highly used 1986 Ford 250 with a 460 V-8 engine, concerned about bad gas mileage given recent severe increases in gas prices (the truck gets about 7 miles per gallon pulling a trailer), emphasized the truck’s other features—AC, extended cab, full size bed, etc. I couldn’t have cared less.

I needed a working Mudder, so to speak, to haul a trailer through mud and couldn’t care less about mileage or any of those other features, although a full size bed gave me more space to haul stuff. Had the Seller simply asked me why I needed a truck, he would have realized that his efforts to sell me on other features were misplaced.

This is why we ask open-ended, strategic questions designed to gain information about the other side’s interests and motives before we make or respond to an offer. Always ask a Seller why he or she is selling (if it’s such a great boat, house, truck or business). Continue to follow up with additional, open-ended questions until you feel you’ve learned as much as you can about what the other side really wants.

Even then it is often wise to make an offer that leaves you room to move in order to gain information based on the other side’s response. Remember that information has value in negotiations. Making assumptions cuts off the process of gaining information from the other side. In negotiations, the best rule is to ask, not to assume.
 

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