When Bargaining, Don’t Force Yourself to Say No Easily.
Many of us find it difficult to ask for something, and this does not contribute to good negotiation skills. Self-help guru Ramit Sethi calls out a classic mistake of passive traders: we too easily let the other side say no.
In his Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance, Sethi offers bargaining scripts for everything from credit card interest rates to bank fees. He has already shared some of these scenarios with us . But in this guide, he proposes a few specific prohibitions on negotiation. One is to make it too easy to say no. He’s writing:
- “Are you sure?” Don’t let the representative say no easily.
- “Is there anything else I can do?” Again, imagine if you were a customer service representative and someone said this. It would be easier to say NO. It’s easy for companies as customers to say no.
Think like a journalist and don’t ask closed-ended questions. Instead, ask questions such as “ What can you suggest? “This is a classic bargaining technique because it works so much better than ‘are you sure? “
You can subscribe to Sethi’s Ultimate Guide here and check out Part 3 of the guide, which includes more negotiation techniques, below.
The Complete Guide to Personal Finance – Part 3 | I will teach you to be rich