Take It or Leave It.

You believe you are reaching a satisfactory agreement, if you could just get a couple more concessions…… All at once your other party pounds the table and tells you empathetically, "Look, I'm not giving you anymore, so take it or leave it!"

How do you respond? If we are not careful, our auto-response might be to tell the other party what he can do with his offer. That would lead to entrenchment and nobody wins. Here are three more constructive responses to TIOLI:

• Summarize and discover: "Gosh, Joe, I thought we were doing quite well today; why has it come down to "take-it-or-leave-it now?" If you can get an explanation as to why your other party thought TIOLI was appropriate, you can rebuild momentum by working through their reasoning.
• Isolate the objection: "Jill, does it have to be take-it-or-leave-it on all three of our remaining issues, or is there one specific item you absolutely must protect?" Perhaps you can give on the mandatory issue in exchange for the issues which may be less critical to the other party.
• Buy some time: "Does it have to be take-it-or-leave-it right now or can we have a couple of days to think this through?" Anytime you can affect the time of the other party's pressure play, you will reduce its effect. Also, time will allow you to re-plan, influence their influencers and allow any emotional content to dissipate.

Many professional negotiators believe that "Take it or Leave it" is a poor choice, but that doesn't mean we won’t encounter it. It is better to be prepared to handle this infamous approach.

Jim Sauerwein