Your own office often provides a powerful advantage because it is your home turf. It’s your operational base. You have all the information needed at your hands. You have a support staff, should you need their expertise or assistance. Your comfort level is going to be at its highest in that environment. The home turf is so important to the Grundig Pump Company of Fresno, California, that it built a series of guestrooms right at its factory and hired a staff to look after visitors. You can see the plant, negotiate the deal, and never worry about accommodations, meals, or anything else while you are in town. Grundig set up an ideal negotiating environment. The visitor is freed from the shackles of travel arrangements and home office interruptions. This setup represents the epitome of the oft-stated rule “always negotiate on your home turf.”
Beware! Negotiating on your home turf is not always best. Often you are better off in the other person’s office. The more time you spend on the other skills covered in this blog, the less important it is whether you are in your office or someone else’s. Sometimes meeting in the other party’s office is actually better for you. If your opponent in a negotiation always claims to be missing some document back at the office, meeting there could avoid that particular evasion. Sometimes bulky, hard-to-transport documents are critical to a negotiation. In that event, the best site for negotiation is wherever those documents happen to be.
Visiting the other person’s office always gives you a lot of information about that person. A quick glance around the office tells you a lot about the person’s interests, usually something about his family situation, whether she is neat or messy, what his taste is in furnishings, and often, just how busy she really is. You usually can tell something about the person’s place in the pecking order of the business. Is her office close to the more-powerful people in the organization or a fur piece away? How much of the coveted window space does he have?
The information you glean from visiting the other person’s office allows you to know the person better. And the better you know and understand the other person, the easier it is for you to relate to them. You can never know too much about the person you are facing in a negotiation. The most important consideration is to be in a place, physically and mentally, where you can listen. Be emphatic on this issue — both for your sake and for the sake of the person with whom you negotiate. If you cannot concentrate on what the other person is saying, you cannot negotiate. It’s impossible.
Beware! Negotiating on your home turf is not always best. Often you are better off in the other person’s office. The more time you spend on the other skills covered in this blog, the less important it is whether you are in your office or someone else’s. Sometimes meeting in the other party’s office is actually better for you. If your opponent in a negotiation always claims to be missing some document back at the office, meeting there could avoid that particular evasion. Sometimes bulky, hard-to-transport documents are critical to a negotiation. In that event, the best site for negotiation is wherever those documents happen to be.
Visiting the other person’s office always gives you a lot of information about that person. A quick glance around the office tells you a lot about the person’s interests, usually something about his family situation, whether she is neat or messy, what his taste is in furnishings, and often, just how busy she really is. You usually can tell something about the person’s place in the pecking order of the business. Is her office close to the more-powerful people in the organization or a fur piece away? How much of the coveted window space does he have?
The information you glean from visiting the other person’s office allows you to know the person better. And the better you know and understand the other person, the easier it is for you to relate to them. You can never know too much about the person you are facing in a negotiation. The most important consideration is to be in a place, physically and mentally, where you can listen. Be emphatic on this issue — both for your sake and for the sake of the person with whom you negotiate. If you cannot concentrate on what the other person is saying, you cannot negotiate. It’s impossible.
No comments:
Post a Comment