To reach a successful agreement, it is sometimes necessary to compromise. Some negotiators resort to hard bargaining strategies to get you to accepting their terms. These tactics can be difficult to spot since they often take subtle forms such as a snort or closed body language. This tactic is particularly effective in high-stakes negotiations, where the other party is convinced that they must « win » in order to be able to continue their job.
The slippery slope tactic involves infusing bad news or problems into the negotiation in tiny slices. This can intensify the pace of the negotiations until they are no longer feasible. This tactic may be a sign that the other party feels under pressure and is seeking to cause a sense of impatience to make it easier to close the agreement.
This tactic uses a number of psychological techniques to make you feel uneasy and unprepared. For example, they might present a topic that is not on your agenda, and suggest that you’re not knowledgeable about it. This main negotiation tactics could include providing an untrue document to prove their point.
This strategy is especially effective if your body is exhausted or stressed from jet-lag, stress or travel. By making you feel exhausted, they might cause you to concede on other points of the deal. This is an especially common method used in high-stakes legal negotiations, where the other parties are under a lot of pressure from their superiors to negotiate the best deal possible. If you think that the other party is employing this tactic, attempt to negotiate each point independently from the previous one.