Can you do any better than that?
This has become my mantra since I began researching my June 19 Yahoo!Finance column on negotiating. Herb Cohen, an author and master negotiator who has advised presidents and trained FBI hostage negotiators, says everything is negotiable.
Cohen is a funny guy (see this YouTube video for a sample). He’s a cross between comedian Rodney Dangerfield and the late actor Jerry Orbach, a charismatic guy who I once met at a party in New York (we shared a dentist in common).
I think genuine charm and humor are critical in getting a deal; a salesperson or customer service rep who gets beat up all day is going to be a lot more sympathetic to the person who can make them smile. Cohen told me about spending a half hour buying a dress with his wife in Bergdorf Goodman. When they were ready to close the sale, he said to the salesperson: “Now what kind of scarf are you throwing in for free?” The salesperson, he says, “didn’t bat an eye – she went out and came back with a scarf. My wife almost died.”
Cohen told me he’s received about 1,000 emails from men who have followed the advice of his book, You Can Negotiate Anything, and received free ties or shirts with the purchase of a suit. (The book came out in 1982 and has sold 3 million copies.)
I’m finding the small stuff can be bargained for potentially big gains. When the doctor’s office wanted $10 just to fill out the forms for my kids’ health records for the next school year, I asked if I could just get a copy of their vaccination records, and received that for free.
When the garage guy came over to fix the broken door, I asked what he could do for me on the $115 charge (for four minutes work, mind you – and believe me, I did try to fix it myself). He gave me $8 off for paying cash.
Total: $18 for about two minutes of conversation – which works out to an hourly wage of $540. In both cases, I followed Cohen’s advice: I was friendly, humble and basically asked how they could help me out (instead of being nasty and demanding). Who says nice guys finish last?
Have you got a tale of successful negotiation? I’d love to hear it.
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on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 8:19 am and is filed under Money & Happiness, customer service, deals and discounts, saving.
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June 19th, 2008 at 5:54 am
My best deal was the purchase of my new house with my wife. We sat down and negotiated hard with the salesperson for 4.5 solid hours. My real estate agent just sat there and said nothing while my wife and I negotiated every detail that I wanted in a house and what I was going to pay for it. Needless to say, we haven’t used her since and I am working on my own real estate license soon. I will be taking the test this weekend, wish me luck.
By the end of the negotiation, my wife and I purchased a house with the following details.
50% off all options unlimited ($75,000 saved)
$25,000 off the base price of the house
$10,000 waved from the lot premium
5.75% 30-year loan*
*This was all dependent upon using their lender, since the house was built by a big builder. In the contract, I stated that if they could not gaurentee me 5.75% by the time I went to closing (6-months from the initial signing), that I would have the ability to use my own person for financing. It turnes out that they couldn’t and I did get to use my own financing.