A Sly Negotiation Tactic to Get What You Want

In football, when you want to give your opponent the feeling that you are moving in one direction but planning on going in another direction, you give them a head fake.

That is, you lean your head in one direction…

And once your opponent commits to that direction, you go the other direction.

The same is true in negotiations.

See, there may come a time in your negotiations where you hit a wall and need to break a stalemate.

Or you just want to see if you can get the seller’s to go lower to come in range with your buyers.

Or things have gone south and you’ve lost control of the transaction.

If that’s the case, then you want to give the impression that  you are withdrawing the offer without actually doing so, roll out the “Withdraw the Offer” head fake.

Here’s How It Works

Imagine you are negotiating to buy a beautiful home for roughly $300,000. You’ve gone through several days of negotiating on many deal points.

Your client loves the house but the seller’s last concession was still $4,000 above what your client wanted to pay.

So you call the seller’s broker–with your client’s permission–and say that your client is going to have to withdraw from buying the house because he could not make the numbers work to his satisfaction.

You, however, are confident that neither the seller nor the broker would let a $300,000 deal go over a difference of $4,000.

Here’s the deal though: That may be the direction it does indeed go. There’s no guarantees.

But the worse that can happen is the other real estate agent says, “Sorry to hear that. Can’t go any lower,” at which point, because your client is willing to pay the difference, you can return, “Let me talk to my client first and make sure he understands what it means to walk away from this deal.”