Sometimes it’s better to back away and take what you have, rather than trying to ask for more. Even if you aren’t sure you have made the best possible deal, a deal may be better than no deal. Pushing your luck can push a good deal right off the table. That’s particularly so when you make a deal after extended negotiations and later remember what you forgot to ask for or face an unexpected contingency. It may be better simply to back off, though you think your request for more is only fair. But the other party may suddenly see you as a difficult person to deal with since you are making still another request; hence the end of the deal.
You might compare this situation to the "nibble" in a real estate or other sales negotiations. You think you have reached an agreement, when the other party comes back with an "Oh, by the way," then asks for a little bit more. You may feel angry and want to walk off, and sometimes people do, while others may reluctantly give in, willing to make one last concession, yet angry all the same. Unfortunately, that’s what someone else may feel when you ask for that little bit more in that you think you deserve it. But the other party may consider your request a deal killer and walk away. Even if you are asking for a small additional amount, your after the agreement request can cause problems, because once you make a deal, the other party may be thinking: "This is done. I can move onto the next thing." But then you come back asking for changes, and the other person can suddenly think you might be a difficult person to work with and they just don’t want the hassle. So while they might have agreed to the additional amount at an earlier point in the negotiations, now is not the time to ask for more. The request backfires and blows the deal. And you get zero, instead of more. This kind of dynamic works in sales agreements—and when you’re trying to get a job or negotiate with a business client.
That’s what happened to Sidney. He was trying to nail down a job doing PR for an out-of-town company in the Northwest that was having a financial slowdown. After offering him a two-year contract for a job, the company had to cancel it, giving him a few thousand dollars to cover his signing and moving expenses, since he had already put up his house on the market and had to pay off the buyer when he backed out of the deal. Then, about two months later, their financial problems over, the company’s Human Resources director offered him the job again, and Sidney agreed. Though he tried to ask for a slightly higher salary, he encountered some resistance, since he had been willing to accept less before, so he quickly backed down. But he did get a commitment for at least six months of work, to make it worth his while to put his house on the market and move. After the contract arrived, however, Sidney saw that the company president wanted him to agree not to do any PR work, even if it was noncompeting work on his own time, and he expressed some concerns about that. At this point, the HR director told him the company president was getting upset about the negotiations, and he could either sign the contract or not. And so he did. Afterwards, he proudly told his friends, neighbors, and PR clients about his new job.
However, soon after the HR director said she would make flight arrangements for Sidney to come to their city to look for housing, Sidney realized that he wouldn’t have time to finish one pending project before his employment start date a few weeks away. So what should he do?
What Should Sidney Do?
Here are some possibilities. In Sidney’s place, what would you do and why? What do you think the outcomes of these different options would be?
- Turn down the contract in the first place, since you aren’t being offered enough and are certain to be resentful.
- Quietly do the project on your own time and not mention it, since it was just a small project, no big deal.
- Ask a lawyer to contact the company president for you, rather than sending an e-mail, to support your claim that you already had a contract for the job.
- Ask for an extra week to arrange your affairs before relocating to do the job, and complete the project during that extra week.
- Be relieved you didn’t get the job and look for another, since you otherwise would be working for an unreasonable company in an unfamiliar place.
- Other?
Unfortunately, Sidney did the one thing he probably shouldn’t—he pushed an already tense negotiation just a little too far. He sent the HR director another e-mail pointing out that he would be losing about $5000 in income for this already agreed upon project, and he said he had forgotten to include this provision in an exception clause for inprogress noncompetitive work. So, now, he asked, could he have permission to complete the project on his own time, or could he be put on the payroll a week early, while he was moving, to defray that lost income? In his view, this was just a request, not a demand or a continuation of the earlier negotiations.
But to the company, his request was like asking for that extra nibble to get a little bit more. The result was that the HR director not only turned down his request in an e-mail but withdrew the company’s offer of employment. Then, making matters worse, Sidney e-mailed the HR director asking to talk to the company president, stating that he already had a contract for employment and he couldn’t be fired for cause for at least six months, to which the HR director said the president didn’t want to talk to him.
In Sidney’s mind, the company was being totally unfair, and had caused him lost work, time, and money, plus the embarrassment of having to explain why things didn’t work out to his references and friends and associates he had told about his new job. So now he was wondering if he should bring in a lawyer. In his view, he had made a reasonable request to which the company could have easily said no—but instead had unreasonably pulled the job offer.
But was the company being unreasonable? From the company’s point of view, it could easily seem like Sidney was asking for one more special exception to get more money after an already tense negotiation. So Sidney had pushed too far, without realizing that his final push was like the proverbial straw on the camel’s back that sent his job hopes off a cliff.
Instead, what Sidney probably should have done was to complete the pending project before he left, give up the expected income if he couldn’t finish the project since he was taking a new job, or quietly finish up the project if he could without asking for any more from the company or even alluding to the contract. After all, if he could finish the project on his own time without interfering with his new job, probably no one would know or care—and he could always explain, if necessary, later on that the project took longer than expected and he had a commitment to finish it. In short, backing off with a little diplomacy might have gone a long way to both keeping his job and his previous job commitment.
Likewise, if you’re in a negotiation that’s gone on for awhile and might be getting tense, pay attention to the cues you are getting from the other party. Are they starting to get tense and testy? Are they resisting your requests? Sometimes the strategy of being a hard bargainer and getting everything you can is exactly what you should not do. Sure, there are times to press forward, especially when you feel your skills and abilities are very much in demand. But once you sense that your requests seem to be triggering resistance or reluctance, it’s better to back away—or the other party may back away first, and there goes your job or the deal.
Today’s Take-Aways:
- If you can’t get everything you want, sometimes it may be better to take what you can get—without asking for more.
- Being a hard bargainer can turn into being a bad bargainer when asking for more becomes asking for too much.
- Watch out that a little nibble doesn’t turn out to be the last bite that blows the deal.
- Thoroughly think through all your requests before you makethem, so you don’t find yourself wanting to ask for more later.
- Ask for everything you reasonably want in the beginning, since you can always pull back some of your requests later—as long as you don’t ask for TOO much to kill the deal in the first place.
- Just like medicine, it goes down more easily when you take it in one gulp. When you ask for more later, it’s like making someone have to take some more spoonfuls of medicine after she has put away the spoon and thinks she doesn’t have to take anymore.