There are some agents out there who think they are Gordon Gecko or Terrell Owens’ agent Drew Rosenhaus and try to negotiate as such. I have often said that trying to negotiate with strong-arm tactics and ultimatums don’t seem to work well. And easiest answer to give when you are pressured is “No.”
I have read books on negotiating but those usually apply to big business where negotiating is an everyday thing. I am also not the agent who thinks my clients are mine to control though I have been told a few times by agents on the other side that I needed to. I told one that it was a great idea and to go ahead and do that with her clients and we could get the deal done.
Last night I was reading “The Upside of Irrationality,” (p20.) In it they talk of an experiment with rats and shock, which is a favorite element for research into stressors and deterrents. They used the shock to see how well the rats learned where to walk. Low voltage didn’t affect them much. Medium voltage caused them to learn quicker than normal. With high voltage the rats could not focus and were unable to figure out how their environment was structured.
They gave some human examples of where stress overloads our ability to make rational decisions or perform to our best. In the human examples they studied CEO’s, created experiments with monetary gain, and watched “clutch” NBA players. These motivations were linked to money or notoriety. They found that the higher the money reward the worse they performed. In the case of players that were considered “clutch”, their percentages did not improve. For the others, the fear of losing the monetary gain makes them react and decide worse.
So even though agents negotiate day in and day out it is still the clients that have to make the decisions contrary to the type of agent I mentioned above. So back to my original premise that strong-arm tactics don’t work well. If a client is already in a situation that some say is a stressful as a death in the family, there is the fear of loss, and the now the agent is creating more stress with time deadline (really? 3 hours to respond to an offer?) or ultimatum that they accept now or it’s over, it is very likely they will say no. I have seen it plenty of times.
Story Time: My clients counter-offered some tiny conditions from a pushy agent two years ago who bashed the house and relayed some comments by her clients that were unnecessary. By chance, well actually it’s a thing I do that gives my clients a little extra time, another offer came up for exactly the same price and conditions. My clients felt that the agent and buyers were going to be difficult through the transaction and revoked their counter offer and then went with the second offer. The first offer might have been fine but the conduct of the that side backfired on them.
