Deception in Negotiations

During the course of negotiations, people often misrepresent information to gain at least a temporary advantage. For example, a seller may fabricate existence of another interested buyer or a buyer may misrepresent the price and availability of an item from a different vendor. Reflect on deceptions in negotiations and describe four ways to reduce your vulnerability to deception during negotiations. Relate an example of a recent negotiation in which you were misled and one in which you may have overstated a claim. In the case of the overstatement, how far would you have gone, or did you actually go, to leverage your position?

The best example I can provide is when I was forced to sell on order car of ours.  I wanted to ensure it was sold to the right type of person, one who had experience in working with cars or who didn’t need to rely upon this as their primary source of transportation. 

In the course of fielding several calls, I would make sure I would ask for what use or what purpose they would intend on using the vehicle.  If the response was to purchase the vehicle as a starter car for their son or daughter to drive to school or to get around, I would try to dissuade the caller from this vehicle because I didn’t want parent to be bound to a car that didn’t have good reliability.  Several callers did express interest, since they were repair enthusiasts and wanted to work on the car as a project with their son or family member.  I was more inclined to sell the car to such a buyer, which I eventually did. 

It was instructive to me as a future buyer because a seller doesn’t need to disclose as much as I did.  One cannot control the story or information provided by the seller, there has to be a level of due diligence conducted by a potential buyer to decide if this transaction is a good decision. 

Conducting as much research as possible is a good way to prevent vulnerability in negotiations.  So is having prior history of the person you’re engaged in said negotiations, which will either lend credibility or raise suspicion of intentions.  Perhaps the best tool in negotiation is the ability to walk away from a deal or situation that just doesn’t seem right, for whatever reason.