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Reason to Study Negotiation #2:
Why We Are Not Taught to
Negotiate in School
T
he schools in the Western world are designed to create subordinate, compliant workers for their industrial factories and militaries. Schools operate Monday to Friday from roughly 9 AM until 5
PM, much like the factories, and that the students must be at their work station when the bell rings much like an industrial factory. Creativity and innovation are not rewarded in this system; instead compliance and subordination are. These student factories—schools—churn out a very specific product: compliant people who wait in line, show up on time, and follow directions. These people are the product of the factory and the by-product of the factory is a society of terrible negotiators. Canada, the United States, Britain, and other Western countries are home to some of the worst negotiators in history because the populations of these countries are conditioned and trained to be compliant to do as they are told. Other countries like China, India, Mexico, Brazil, and Israel have different cultures that are not so compliant, so for the non-Western countries, negotiation is a way of life.
In Western supermarkets, American and Canadian consumers are purchasing meat, fish, bread, and produce at the sticker price—or the adverised price as is socially acceptible in the local culture. On the streets of Mexico, street vendors and Mexican consumers are negotiating for the same meat, fish and produce, and they pay wildly different (and much lower) prices.
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As a world traveller myself I notice that a three-taco dinner in Canada is $15 whereas three street tacos in the United States is $3, and in Mexico they can sell for even less. Why do the Canadian consumers pay more? Very simply, Canadians are some of the worst negotiators in the world. The Canadian culture is a culture that values being “nice” and paying what people ask. Very seldom in Canada do consumers negotiate the sticker prices of the goods and services being sold at Walmart. Ironically, Walmart has built its economic success on the fact that they have some of the best negotiators and the strongest negotiating process with suppliers in the world. On one hand, Walmart is an excellent negotiator; on the other hand, the American consumer is not!
In reality, everything is open for negotiation—even the groceries on the shelf at Wal-Mart—but we do not negotiate because it is not in our culture. In reality, negotiation is in our nature; just look at a young child or baby before he has been socialized into the public school system. If the baby is hungry, he cries for mother’s milk, and his mother gives him her breast. You are reading this book today because you won your first negotiation—you cried for mother’s milk, and she gave it to you! If you did not win that negotiation, you would have died. Children go to the store with their parents and kick and scream for a toy they like. Parents, being the hostages of children, will very often yield to this style of negotiation and will give the crying baby the toy that he wants.
Absolutely everything in life is open for negotiation, but first we must ask. As a world traveller, I often find myself checking in and out of hotel rooms many times a year. Many hotel rooms have two bottles of water on the dresser that have price tags on them that say, “If you drink this water, we will charge your room $8 per bottle.” Of course $8 for a 10-cent bottle of water is outlandish so I will call the front desk and ask “Where can I find the complementary bottles of water in my room?” The front desk will reply “Sir, we don’t provide complementary water at this hotel.”
I will say “I understand. Where can I find the complementary bottles of water in my room?”
There will be a long silence, and finally I will say, “Can you send me four complementary bottles of water to my room? I am very thirsty, and I don’t think these two bottles will be enough.” There will be another si-
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lence, and the front desk will say, “Yes, sir, we will send some up to you.”
Although the hotel is selling bottles of water at $8 apiece, by negotiating I will often get free water and many more bottles of water just by asking. The written word says bottles of water are $8 at that establishment, but in actual fact, you can get what you want complements of the house if you ask the right way because everything is negotiable.
After I receive my complementary water, I will call the front desk and ask for a complementary robe because I did not find a robe in my room. The hotel will comply and send me a complementary robe up to my room.
At the time of check in I will often ask “What is the best room you can upgrade me to today free of charge?” Very often the hotel will upgrade me just because they have nicer rooms than I have booked sitting vacant and empty. The average cost to operate and clean a hotel room for a night is $18, so it doesn’t matter to the hotel if they give me a regular room or a suite. You just have to ask.
On the back of the door in the hotel is a sign that says “Failure to check out by 11:00 AM will result in a $450 charge to your room.” Most people who read this sign will try their absolute hardest to avoid a $450 charge and will leave the room vacant by 11:00 AM the next day. The last hotel I stayed at, I called the front desk and asked “What’s the latest I can check out today?” The front desk replied, “1 PM, sir.”
I then asked “Can I purchase this room on a half-day rate to stay until 5 PM?” The front desk replied, “We do not do half day rates, sir.”
“Okay,” I replied; “what’s the latest I can stay today then, 5 PM?” There was a pause on the other end of the phone and the hotel staff said, “You can stay until 5 PM, sir, at no extra charge.”
The sign on the back of the door says that staying past 11:00 AM results in a $450 fee but because I negotiated, I was able to stay in the room until 5 PM at no additional cost.
You may be reading these last three examples about bottles of water, robes, and late checkouts at hotels and think to yourself, “Big deal, who cares?” and I agree with you. These are all small negotiations and small deals, but the point I want to make is that everything—and I mean ev-
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erything—is negotiable, regardless of what people tell you. You may feel an urge to avoid negotiation or to avoid confrontation, or you may have a fear of asking because your social conditioning tells you to take what you are given. But in reality, absolutely every policy, every price, every custom, every expectation in business or in life is negotiatible if you have courage to ask.
Visit Xnegotiation.com to claim your valuable bonuses.
STEFAN
