Negotiation Skills – Lose/Lose Strategies

April 13, 2012

 

We’ve now discussed the two strategies you can choose from—win-win or win-lose. However, there is a third strategy that you don’t really choose—it typically chooses you. That strategy is called lose-lose. As you can probably guess from the name of it, no one comes out a winner when this strategy takes over. The outcome of the negotiation is zero. No party benefits. Lose-lose outcomes typically develop when everything starts going south in the negotiation—either you have rubbed the other party the wrong way or they have done something to prevent you from coming to an agreement.

Consider the example I gave you earlier at the car dealership. Imagine if Brian had realized the company chose to use a hard sell so they would win in the end. He could have easily said, “Forget it. I’m going somewhere else to purchase the car.” The company would have lost because they would have lost the sale and a future customer. Brian would have lost because he wasted a day negotiating and didn’t end up with the car. Check out this example of a lose-lose situation. Did either party benefit from the negotiation? Now, in this situation you could say the parties chose to use a lose-lose strategy, but in the real world people don’t choose it in the beginning. After the negotiations fail and they blame each other, you realize whether a lose-lose strategy was at play. If the other party believes that you don’t genuinely care about their needs and interests, you can have a lose-lose outcome or if both parties elect to use a win-lose strategy the chances of a lose-lose outcome increase.

 

 

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