A Negotiation Trainer Walks into a Car Dealership
I am a professional negotiation consultant and trainer, and today, I have the opportunity to interact with a car salesperson (all of whom are not the same).
I am welcomed into the dealership by a gentleman donning a fur-hooded parka over his suit, though it is not particularly cold inside. He escorts me to his desk and offers me a seat. He asks me questions that thinly veil his curiosity about my financial situation and familiarity with cars. This is highly relevant information, but he has skipped over any attempt to build rapport with me, which makes me less willing to share information, because I am suspicious of what he will do with it.
I indicate which vehicle I am interested in, and on our way to the lot, he informs me that he has just bought his wife the same car last week. I marvel at the coincidence. He adds that this particular German car manufacturer is focusing all their energy on this model and are looking to take the American market “by storm”. My excitement to drive the car morphs into a fear of blitzkrieg.
I am handed the keys to the car. I drive it. I come back. He brings me back to the desk and asks me how it went. He is still wearing the fur-hooded parka.
I say, “It was nice, but it made me feel dizzy”.
“WHAT?!” he shouts.
“In 15 years of being a car salesman I have never heard anyone say something like this!”
I flirt with staring into his eyes and asking if he will help me strengthen my congenitally weak constitution. I settle for telling him that 15 years is impressive sales experience, and somehow, unpersuasive to my physical sensations.
Aside from the missed opportunity to empathize, I am realizing that the root of my frustration isn’t his behavior - it is this all-too-common belief that effective influence is telling another person the reasons they should do something. However, the more he pushes, the more I feel like pushing back. My “internal voice” becomes loud and unkind. Effectively, I can’t even hear him.
This frame for selling also creates a competitive dynamic whereby any attempt by the customer to tell the seller their preferences is received as an argument instead of useful information. Even a comment like, “I’m dizzy” registers as an attempt to score a point. Maybe he believes I am feigning disinterest in order to chip at the price of the vehicle later on. But we are not in a “distributive”, zero-sum phase of the negotiation – we are still exchanging information. By acting as if we are already in competition, we are drawing against trust we have yet to build.
I attempt an inquiry about the cost of repairs, and he assures me that the car is a quality car. I rephrase the question, “How much would it cost to replace the transmission?” He throws his hands up in exasperation and tells me not to worry so much.
I am now at my threshold for nausea, and I tell him I should be getting back home. He asks me to wait so that he can tell the manager what we did, and I stay because research shows that when people give you a reason for their request, they are more likely to comply, and I’m not one to act in contradiction to the research.
His manager comes over to “thank” me for coming into the dealership (to prod to see if there is anything the salesmen might have missed in the sales process). I am permitted to leave after being handed both of their business cards.
What did we learn?
From a tactical perspective
The first principle of influence is that you cannot change a person’s mind if you don’t know where their mind is. And the way we understand where someone’s mind is, is by asking them questions (or “inquiry”). Telling someone why they should want something (“advocacy”) is what most people do…and it generates resistance.
The best questions are open-ended, genuine attempts to understand a person’s perspective. There are no perfect interactions, and the savviest negotiators and trainers make mistakes (there is a reason that crisis negotiators work in teams). However, at any point he could have asked me what is important to me. As long as there is time, there exists the possibility of course-correcting.
Our willingness to give information in our answers depends on how much we trust the other person. Without building relationship, questions can feel invasive. One suggestion here would be to ask, “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions to get a better sense of what you’re looking for?” Asking permission communicates respect and care.
Commonly, I hear that there isn’t the time to do all this listening in a fast-paced environment. Let me assure you that any time that is “saved” with a transactional approach will be spent dealing with customer service downstream. Let’s say he does push a car on me. It is highly unlikely that I will refer others to them, nor revisit them myself, and it is more likely that I will find fault with the product.
From a strategic perspective
The inability to ask genuine questions is also a strategic error. Treating customers as passive receptacles to dump your knowledge into feels as nasty as it sounds. Recycling lines that might have sparked a reaction with other customers and filling up airtime to project expertise in the hopes that something will land, is throwing a Hail Mary on every snap. Hope is not a strategy.
Within organizations there are often structural challenges – my good friend is negotiating at two tables: one with me, and one with the dealership’s management. Whereas I am negotiating for myself, the car salesman’s “win-set” narrows between the upper limits of what I will pay and the lower limits of what the dealership will accept. At the point at which the manager comes out and hands me her card, I am identifying that she is the person I want to be meeting with. She, the manager, likely cares more about selling off inventory and he, the salesman, cares more about his cut.
We shouldn’t be surprised when people act in their own interests. When we are working within an organization, think about the behaviors that your incentive structures may generate. Working outside of the organization, think about who you want to be negotiating with and their authority to make a deal that is best for you.
In order to change our negotiated outcomes, we might be served by updating our beliefs about what it means to "influence".