Night reading and unwinding are beneficial
When I said the psychological price, the seller quickly wrapped things up for me, lost and lost, and I didn't play well.
The hr manager asked me what my salary expectations were, and I shuddered and reported a conservative number, remorseful afterwards.
In addition, we often face negotiation scenarios: communication with colleagues is always misunderstood; recommending products to each other is always rejected; in communication, people are always "walking with rhythm"... What to do?
In the book "Learning to Negotiate: Fighting for More for Yourself", the author Wang Da uses various practical cases he has personally experienced to explain to you the knowledge and theoretical system of negotiation and communication in a simple and simple way.
From it, you can learn: in the face of the other party's "routines" and means, how to let yourself lose less and get more in each negotiation.
Today we're going to try out the highlights of this book. The following is published with the permission of the publisher.
Learn to negotiate
Author: Wang Da
Anchoring effect
How exactly do negotiators influence other people's ideas and decisions?
Before arriving at an answer, we must first understand an important psychological effect, because all negotiation strategies are developed and implemented around it, that is, the anchoring effect.
As the name suggests, the anchoring effect means that when we make judgments about things, we are extremely susceptible to first impressions or first information, and the first impressions or first information are like giant anchors that sink to the bottom of the sea, anchoring our judgments deadly.
As the saying goes, preconceived notions, we all emphasize the importance of first impressions, which also reveals the widespread existence of this psychological phenomenon. Under the premise of information asymmetry, the use of anchoring effect has become the most concise and very effective negotiation strategy.
Taking the most common scenarios in life as an example, we must have experienced the game of bargaining with merchants when buying things. Generally speaking, the initial offer given by the merchant can be "cut".
A beautiful coat, the merchant may give you a 5,000 yuan offer, and skillfully "stuff" to give you some "exquisite workmanship" and "good materials" and other grandiose reasons.
"Experienced" you look at this dress with a "slightly dissatisfied" look, afraid that your face will show the slightest expression of satisfaction.
Subsequently, you began to bargain, secretly insisting that this time you should cut it fiercely, first cut 1,000 yuan!
So you open your mouth to counter-offer 4000 yuan, and then you come and go, and the final transaction price is most likely the middle value of each bid, that is, 4500 yuan.
This is a reasonable prediction, because in a single-variable game, taking the middle value is always the fairest and most acceptable solution for both sides.
It seems that you "won" this negotiation and saved yourself 500 yuan; the merchant's behavior seems to confirm your judgment, and he will definitely complain "Oh, I lost a lot this time, I really don't make you money", while quickly packing things and handing them to you to complete the transaction.
You know, no normal businessman would be keen to do a loss-making business, so what is the problem?
You feel that you have successfully cut off 500 yuan and received a 10% discount, which is the best outcome. But what would you think if I told you that the purchase price of this dress might be only 1,000 yuan or less?
The mystery behind the problem is that the merchant knows the cost of clothes, so the quotation he started to give will be inflated, but he did not expect customers to accept this condition immediately, but the fundamental reason why he still insisted on doing so was that he wanted to use the anchoring effect to make customers deviate from the value judgment of this item.
People's judgments are always subtly dominated or influenced by the first information, that is, in the face of a 5,000 yuan thing, you must define it as a piece of clothing worth thousands of dollars. Without other information comparison, you will never think that this coat is only worth a few hundred yuan or even tens of dollars, so the extent of your bargaining will be somewhat limited.
Recall that when we bought large pieces, the car of hundreds of thousands of yuan must have been cut in the range of one or two million yuan, and when buying a house of several million yuan, it must have been cut by tens of thousands of yuan or even hundreds of thousands of yuan.
It is not difficult for us to find that the amplitude of people bargaining and undercutting prices is basically in the range of 1% to 10% of the initial quotation of this transaction, which is the restriction that the merchant uses the anchoring effect to form on the buyer.
Even if you are shrewd enough to cut a discount at the beginning of the negotiation, and you are very tough without any concessions to force the merchant to finally accept the half-price conditions, but do not forget that the cost of the goods may only be 1000 yuan, and the price of 2500 yuan can still guarantee his 1.5 times the net profit margin, and he still makes a lot of money.
Just as the so-called buy never sells the fine, the key to the seller's ability to always take the initiative is that his initial offer has greatly affected your real value judgment of the item, and this judgment must be far from the actual cost area, and the seller has enough margin of safety to negotiate with you.
We always say that shop around is actually to avoid the disadvantage caused by a separate information input source and be anchored by the seller's price.
But have you found that in the early years, many clothing stores sold clothes are so-called exclusive models, of course, they will not easily give you the opportunity to break through the information "black box" through comparison, so the profit margin brought by the sale of such clothing is also extremely impressive.
The anchoring effect will not only be applied to small business scenarios, but many well-known FMCG, catering, and clothing brands will adopt similar strategies to complete "price negotiations" with consumers.
The familiar Starbucks sales strategy typically applies the anchoring effect. In fact, consumers decide whether to buy goods at a specific business is a process of negotiation and game, and Starbucks and starbucks have long completed a silent negotiation for the price of a cup of coffee.
In the early years, if you carefully looked at the window when buying coffee at Starbucks, you would find that there was always an "Evian mineral water" in the Price List of Starbucks, with a price tag of 20 yuan. You must wonder who would spend $20 here on a bottle of mineral water?
A large number of business statistics can confirm that the price of the largest number of products purchased by consumers in each store is basically infinitely close to the median price of all products in this store.
Does it feel like déjà vu? Too expensive to buy, and always give people a feeling of too much luxury and waste; the cheapest is not assured, there is a way is cheap no good goods, good goods are not cheap. As a result, the goods at the middle price point are particularly cost-effective.
Review the state of mental activity of the customer entering Starbucks.
As soon as they enter the store, they will definitely look at the prices of the most basic and cheapest goods.
When they see a bottle of mineral water for 20 yuan, they will secretly feel expensive, but whether their attitude at the moment is positive or negative, the price of this bottle of mineral water will quietly establish a price reference base in the customer's mind.
Then when they thought that they could drink a cup of fragrant mocha coffee by adding 10 yuan to 20 yuan, the price of coffee seemed less difficult to accept under this comparison.
This bottle of Evian mineral water of 20 yuan is an anchor, and under its price, customers will feel that 30 yuan of coffee is acceptable, which is the role of the anchor effect.
In many high-end restaurants, there are many outrageously expensive basic consumer goods. For example, in a restaurant in Beijing that consumes 400 yuan per capita, the price of a can of cola is as high as 25 yuan.
Offer a "greedy asking price"
How do you get a head start in negotiations? Combined with the theory of anchoring effects, one of the most direct and effective methods is to learn to offer a "greedy asking price".
To what extent is it "greedy"? It's just that you think, "Wow, am I going too far this time?" ”
Well, if that's the idea in your head, add another 50%!
If at this moment, you are talking to the company's human resources manager about salary, you think that the monthly salary of 10,000 is a fairer result, and even a little greed, in this case, please trouble you to add 50%, ask for a starting salary of 15,000 yuan!
Why? Because in the process of negotiation, both sides have countless opportunities to make concessions.
Reanalyzing the situation in the salary negotiations:
If you ask for 15,000 yuan, even if the other party cuts 20%, you still have 12,000 yuan of salary to take, the result is still much higher than you expected.
Just as in the Starbucks case, the final result of a single-condition negotiation generally falls within the median range of the initial conditions of both parties, and if you start with a price of 10,000 yuan, the negotiation space you have reserved for yourself is too narrow.
The human resources manager offered 7,000 yuan at this time, and said that under the premise of your concession, he can fight for a certain salary increase for you.
At this time, he has obviously made concessions, so in order to show the sincerity of cooperation, it is time for you to give in, what are you going to do?
No way, a few concessions will make the final negotiation result not meet your expectations, in other words, you have lost.
I've even seen people throw their bottom line straight out at the beginning of a negotiation. This practice is tantamount to voluntarily abandoning all forward positions before the start of the war, allowing the other side to directly put the cannon at the door of your headquarters. Is this kind of battle still needed to be fought? As soon as the end of the war begins, even the best generals will immediately become cannon fodder.
Taking this case, we can look at the essence of the negotiation from a higher level of cognition, in fact, the process of wrestling between the two sides can be understood as the process of expected control and counter-control.
The ultimate purpose of the various reasons and strategies you come up with is nothing more than to make the other party gradually realize that he will not get so much from you this time.
As he keeps compressing his psychological expectations, you win the negotiation when it finally coincides with your final conditions.
Your child originally thought you should give him 20 yuan of pocket money, and you made him realize through your persistence that it was good that he could take 10 yuan this time, which is the process of negotiation wrestling, and you are controlling his expectations.
This is also the biggest strategic significance of "greedy asking price" -
The initial requirements are a little more, and the space that can be concessioned is naturally a little larger.
Of course, due to the objective existence of the anchoring effect, the human resources manager's value assessment of you when you ask for 15,000 yuan will be higher than when you ask for 10,000 yuan, because his expectation of negotiation is actually affected by your "greedy asking price".
If you think you're only worth $10,000, the other person will think you're worth $10,000 or less. And through the superposition of the double positive effect of one mile and one outside, this strategy will give you enough room for maneuver and a margin of safety, and even this one strategy alone can make you at least 20% to 30% more profitable in all future negotiations.
In fact, when I first applied this strategy, I successfully saved my company tens of thousands of yuan in procurement costs.
On that occasion, I was commissioned by the company's after-sales department to purchase a set of testing equipment. After getting the initial offer from the supplier, I decided to get some discounts for the company. So I asked my colleagues who had long-term experience working with this supplier, and I wanted to know what kind of discounts this supplier generally gives us. My colleagues have reported that this company will give a 9.15% discount, which is 91.5% of the original price.
With this concept in place, I had a reasonable expectation of the outcome of the negotiation, and then evaluated the offer that the other party was currently giving me, and concluded that the offer was inflated. After sorting out my negotiating ideas, I dialed the other sales manager's phone, and after the greeting, I said that as their long-term customers, we have always enjoyed discounts, and this time I asked for a more favorable price than the current price.
The other party happily agreed to my proposal, but then threw me a difficult question: "How much discount do you think is appropriate?" ”
Since the initiative was given to me, I naturally chose to offer a "greedy asking price."
I said: "According to the history of previous cooperation between the two sides, you will generally give us a 20% discount. ”
In the face of my asking price, the other party said after a moment of silence that he needed to ask his leadership, which was completely expected by me, because my bottom line was 91.5%, that is, as long as I finally got this discount, I would not be a "loss".
Regarding this detail, I would like to emphasize that you must give a corresponding reasonable reason when you try to make a "greedy asking price".
Clothing vendors will say that their products are made of the best materials and unique styles; Starbucks will say that its environment is superb and its coffee taste is among the best in the industry; and employees seeking high wages will list their rich work experience and glamorous resumes, which are the "anchors" that ensure the reasonableness of the asking price. And there is no doubt that in the history of cooperation, the other company will give us a certain discount, which is why I asked the seller for the discount.
Of course, for this bold plan I also prepared an emergency plan, if the other party vetoed my request and said that the cooperation management of the two companies is settled at a 9.15 discount, as a response, I will naturally say that because I have just taken over this position, many situations are not well understood, may have biased memory, this is just the worst plan.
Then the other party contacted me and said that after talking to the leader, they thought that the 20% discount was too harsh and difficult for them to accept, but they could give a 1.3% discount.
In the face of this unexpected result, I did not immediately accept his conditions, but said that it was lower than we expected, and I also needed to ask my own leader for instructions (tactical delays).
After 10 minutes, I said to the other party with a very "reluctant" mood: "Well, then 1.3% off, because we have urgent needs for this equipment, I can only coordinate with the company's internal personnel, next time I hope you can give a better price, and please be sure to ensure the delivery of the goods." ”
In just 30 minutes, I saved the company an additional nearly 13% of the cost, because the unit price of this equipment is still very expensive, but the cost savings will undoubtedly eventually translate into the company's real money and silver profits.
If there is one of the most efficient ways in the world to win for one's own interests, it must be negotiation, not one of them.
Try negotiating thinking
A philosopher once said, "It is not because it is good to be successful, but to be good because it is successful." "I particularly agree, and I am convinced.
If we want to have a negotiating mindset, or to improve our negotiation skills, the point that can never be avoided is practice.
In fact, the success referred to here is not to immediately win tens of millions of sales orders, or let the company immediately give you a 50% increase in salary. You can start with a lot of small things, such as asking the other person what the preferential policies are when buying coffee, or fighting for greater compensation for yourself in the event of a late or delayed flight.
The value of negotiating thinking is not only reflected in life, but also in business activities.
I have a friend who is a postdoc at Tsinghua University, she used to be a visiting scholar in the United States, she came to me and said that she wanted to write to her professor recommending one of her friends to be a visiting scholar in the United States, hoping that I would make some suggestions on the content of the letter.
After opening the letter from my email, I decided to use negotiation thinking to completely "beautify" the letter and make it look.
From the perspective of the logical thinking of this letter, she first chose to discuss with the professor about recommending her friend, which I personally think is inappropriate. Since it is a letter, if you go straight to the subject, it will inevitably give people a feeling of not climbing the Three Treasures Hall without anything.
We have to look at the problem in light of the actual social situation, she and the professor must have not seen each other for a long time since she returned to China, and it is the best choice to ask the professor about the latest situation first, and then emphasize that her unique visiting experience with the professor in that year has made her very fruitful and impressive, and it is one of the most memorable times of her life.
On this basis, feng feng turned his words and expressed his hope to recommend one of her close friends to also learn from the professor and accept the professor's guidance. Greetings will make the other party feel kind, and at the same time, the words are logical, so it seems natural and convincing to recommend close friends to experience this "excellence" in person, and fully take care of the professor's feelings.
Again, there is no superficial phenomenon, only a superficial understanding of the phenomenon.
The ancients had clouds: "The upper soldiers cut down the plot, the second cut the friendship, the second cut the soldiers, and the lower attack on the city; the method of siege is a last resort." "Therefore, the soldier is not a bloody blade, and the best policy is the best."
There is no doubt that the use of negotiation thinking is the best way to help us reach a "cutting plot" in the current commercial battlefield.
Excerpt from Learning to Negotiate: Get More for Yourself. Life is full of negotiations, and negotiation is the only way to achieve personal goals. Wang Da, a well-known respondent and an excellent speaker of the live course, summarized the 500 typical questions in the negotiation they raised in the process of communicating with a large number of readers, and formed the main content of the book through combing and summarizing. At the same time, the cases in the article are from the author's personal experience, which are true and credible, and are full of guiding significance.
Learn to negotiate: Fight for yourself more [Zhihu Production] ¥29 purchase