Never Negotiate With Yourself

This may seem obvious but the number of people that break this simple rule never fails to amaze me. Let’s look at an example, you are meeting with a potential hire and you are discussing salary, as an aside if they are good pay them above the going rate; thats a different post!

You make an offer of 30 thousand a year, the other person doesn’t look too impressed. What you should never do (and ignore any uncomfortable silences) is then make another, higher, offer. Suppose you then offer 35 or 40, the candidate may be willing to settle for 32 but you’ve just lost the difference. You should instead wait until they make a counter offer and base your next move on the new information.

The other useful tidbit (also common sense) concerns negotiating when facing a deadline. Don’t do it, the other party will stall and then force you to either make concessions at the end or you’ll have to pay in time and money to rearrange you schedule in order to stay in the discussions. Following this logic you should always try and negotiate when you are in a position to out wait the other party.