A guy is walking down the road and he sees a blue Chevrolet pickup truck for sale in a yard. He walks up to the door and asks “How much for the truck?” The seller of the truck tells him it’s 10K. The buyer pulls out 10K in cash and hands it to the seller. The seller walks back inside and sits down at the table. “Dang, I should have asked for more money. He took my first offer.” The buyer drives away thinking aloud” Man he took my first offer. I should have offered him less.” Neither Buyer or Seller felt they had come out on the winning side of the deal despite getting and giving exactly what they wanted.
Let’s look at a different scenario. The same guy is walking down the road and sees the blue Chevrolet pickup truck for sale in a yard. He walks up to the door and asks ”How much for the truck?” The seller of the truck tells him it’s 15k. The buyer looks at the seller and says”15k? Are you crazy? I will give you 5k.” The Seller looks at him and says “There is no way I am selling that truck for 5K. How about 12.5K.” Well this goes back and forth for the next 10 minutes and finally they reach an agreed upon price of 10k. The Seller goes back inside and sits down at the table. “ Can you believe that I got that guy up 5k from his original offer! ”The buyer drives away thinking out loud “Can you believe I got that guy to come down 5k off of his original price?”
Same result but there were 2 different methods of getting to the final price. Why do we feel we must always negotiate in order to feel like we are not getting taken advantage of? Why do we feel the need to haggle in order to feel like we got the best deal? What if the deal offered up front was the best deal?
The point of this story is to bring to light our own belief systems when it comes to negotiation. Do we need to always ask for more money to feel like we haven’t left something on the table? The answer to this question will not be given here because there is no answer for everyone. However, when negotiating your next job maybe you should ask yourself the following question. Am I trying to negotiate because I feel like my value is more than the offered amount or am I just fearful of losing out. Knowing this may help you clarify your true desires and focus on what really matters to you in the negotiation process.