adampreston.com » Philippines http://adampreston.com how I roll Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:35:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 en hourly 1 The Pause http://adampreston.com/2009/11/03/the-pause/ http://adampreston.com/2009/11/03/the-pause/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:11:39 +0000 Adam http://adampreston.com/?p=246 negotiationI am not a very good negotiator.  Although, you don’t have to take my word for it, just ask the lady who runs the laundry service about a block from my apartment.  Where I come from in America you don’t need to be negotiator.  Everything is a set price.  Its not like you can walk into a McDonalds and try to get a nickel or two knocked off your  McLatte.  I digress.
As I was saying, I am not a good negotiator, but I do know one thing, a properly timed pause in the negotiation is absolutely crucial.  Take for example when I took a couple of dress shirts in to be dry cleaned today.  The woman behind the counter first told me that it would be 150 pesos (or about 3 bucks)  each .  I knew this wasn’t a great deal, but at this point in the day I was okay with it. But…instead of agreeing right away (like an idiot) (like I normally do), I  decided to use “The Pause”, one of my very few negotiating tactics.    Without saying anything I slowly looked down at the counter, then up at the ceiling and then back at her, giving her the impression that I was really thinking about something.

“Ok, 100 pesos each” she said.

I am pretty sure I still got screwed over, but thanks to the Pause  this amateur negotiator got screwed over just a little bit less.

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