Use a well known psychological trick to get a better deal at your next negotiation.
Have you had a salesman quote a very high sum, try to convince you at that price, & then appear to compromise at a lower price ’specially for you’? Well this tactic is a psychological trick called ’Reciprocal Concession’. You can use it to get things in your favour on your next negotiation.
Research has found that when someone makes a concession for us by reducing the size of their original request, we see it as a favour & feel a psychological obligation to change our position to try and agree to their revised offer. When we agree to a revised offer, our mind perceives it as a victory — we influenced the opponent to take less money. This feeling that we ‘influenced’ the other guy into conceding also results in us feeling more responsible for the final outcome of the negotiations. Studies have also shown that not only do people respond by meeting the desired demand after a reciprocal concession, but are more positive to further requests.
The next time you walk into a situation where you are going to be asking someone for something, you should always have a smaller “back-up” request which you craft as a ‘concession’. But there are some things you need to keep in mind. Don’t make your initial request so ridiculous that it is seen as a joke, because then the reduced follow-up request will not be taken seriously. Also, the second request must be perceived as being significantly smaller than the initial request. Lastly, the two request must be somehow related, so as to give a perception of concession.
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From the desk of Aditya Khanduri
About me (Why I started Polygyan)
