Negotiation Strategies May 30, 2012

Negotiation Skills: Three More Ways to Use Time

When building your negotiation skills, it's crucial to recognize that time is a key element in bargaining power. If you have time to explore multiple outcomes, but your opposing party doesn’t, you are very likely to come out with a better arrangement at the end of the negotiation. You can negotiate better with less time pressure than the other side.

This is a key foundational strategy, but one that is often overlooked. Instead of planning negotiation strategies linked to time, most people take too long at the beginning of negotiations and then feel rushed and overwhelmed as the deadline approaches. Feeling rushed because of a deadline is almost a guarantee that you will make a less favorable deal than you could have.

With that in mind, let's explore three more ways to use time in your negotiations:

1. Pick the best time to negotiate. If you are bargaining for bananas at the market, approach them at 5:00pm on Saturday afternoon before they close for the night or weekend. There is usually a best time for everything.
2. Leave time for things to go wrong. Murphy’s Law applies to negotiation as well as life- things will go wrong if they can. Have second options available or have extra cash around to maneuver with.
3. Have a contingency plan when talks are delayed or things bog down. Start on the assumption that your time will be wasted in unforeseen ways. Instead of getting nervous or caving in at a deadline, build a fallback position.

All of these points indicate that you’ll need flexibility to maintain your bargaining position. They also remind us that the time to worry about “buying time in a negotiation” is long before you actually need it.