Hard-bargaining is NOT the key to success. Threats and unreasonable demands may work in the short term but do not DEVELOP relationships. Eventually, you will need help from your factory. If you hard-bargain every time, favors won’t happen.

What does hard-bargaining say about you? It says that you view each deal as either win or lose. Very few negotiations are centred upon single issues, such as price. These deals can indeed be viewed as win-lose or distributive negotiations. However, as the complexity of your needs develop, with the price being only a single factor, hard-bargaining won’t successfully negotiate the contract.

The vast majority of negotiations are multi-faceted. Each challenge provides for you and the exporter an opportunity to create win-wins or mutually beneficial agreements. Proper negotiators creatively identify differences which are used for tradeoffs and contribute towards building long-term trust.

If you negotiate by saying “No” to everything and frame the deal as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, you invitably leave benefits on the table; whether future considerations or deal-specific. Keep in mind that how you treat an exporter is how they’ll treat you in return. Negotiation hardball tactics create cycles of threats and demands. Stick to hard-bargaining and say hello to impasses, distrust, and landing a subpar deal.

10 Hard-Bargaining Tactics & Negotiation Skills

The first part of avoiding an all-or-nothing tactic is to recognize this type of behaviour in yourself. Yes, you must get that price point, and you need delivery for when you need it. However, self-awareness in and outside of business rules and knowing that there are always ways to meet positive goals keeps your thinking creatively.

Seeing yourself in the equation, as a non hardball negotiator, helps to ready you for a hard-bargaining exporter. You must be able to identify this tactic and effectively counter and defuse it in ways that achieves your many goals. Check out Beyond Winning: Negotiating to Create Value in Deals and Disputes, Robert Mnookin. The authors explain how to not get caught off-guard by hard bargainers.

If building a secure, two-way relationship is not your thing…

10 hardball tactics in negotiation to watch out for from the authors of Beyond Winning:

1. Extreme demands followed up by small, slow concessions. Perhaps the most common of all hard-bargaining tactics, this one protects dealmakers from making concessions too quickly. However, it can keep parties from making a deal and unnecessarily drag out business negotiations. To head off this tactic, have a clear sense of your own goals, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA), and bottom line – and don’t be rattled by an aggressive opponent.
2. Commitment tactics. Your opponent may say that his hands are tied or that he has only limited discretion to negotiate with you. Do what you can to find out if these commitment tactics are genuine. You may find that you need to negotiate with someone who has greater authority to do business with you.
3. Take-it-or-leave-it negotiation strategy. Offers should rarely be nonnegotiable. To defuse this hard-bargaining tactic, try ignoring it and focus on the content of the offer instead, then make a counter-offer that meets both parties’ needs.
4. Inviting unreciprocated offers. When you make an offer, you may find that your counterpart asks you to make a concession before making a counteroffer herself. Don’t bid against yourself by reducing your demands; instead, indicate that you are waiting for a counteroffer.
5. Trying to make you flinch. Sometimes you may find that your opponent keeps making greater and greater demands, waiting for you to reach your breaking point and concede. Name the hard-bargaining tactic and clarify that you will only engage in a reciprocal exchange of offers.
6. Personal insults and feather ruffling. Personal attacks can feed on your insecurities and make you vulnerable. Take a break if you feel yourself getting flustered, and let the other party know that you won’t tolerate insults and other cheap ploys.
7. Bluffing, puffing, and lying. Exaggerating and misrepresenting facts can throw you off guard. Be skeptical about claims that seem too good to be true and investigate them closely.
8. Threats and warnings. Want to know how to deal with threats? The first step is recognizing threats and oblique warnings as the hard-bargaining tactics they are. Ignoring a threat and naming a threat can be two effective strategies for defusing them.
9. Belittling your alternatives. The other party might try to make you cave in by belittling your BATNA. Don’t let her shake your resolve.
10. Good cop, bad cop. When facing off with a two-negotiator team, you may find that one person is reasonable and the other is tough. Realize that they are working together and don’t be taken in by such hard-bargaining tactics.

When you develop a good factory resource in China, keep them away from your customers, and vice versa. It takes a lot of work to establish key factory relationships. Delivery cycles are short. Controlling shipping goes a long way toward owning the most critical element in the entire importing process; successfully delivering the order. Allowing your factory to ship directly to your customer is unacceptable. Blind Shipping is a closed loop. Only the importer will know the points of origin and destination. Prevent supply chain predators from cutting you out. Deliver within 2-days. Learn more below. #BlindShipFromChina #ItsEasy 

Perry David Caplan | Founder ShipCustomerDirect.com
877-887-4472, What We Do
23,000+ shipments since 2008

ShipCustomerDirect.com