The Trees in Our Garden Had Grown Very Tall Blocking Out the Sunlight. The Tree Guy Came Around to Give Me a Quote. Great Conditioning From Him and He Didn’t Even Know it!
As I talked about the tall trees, pointing at them (like he didn’t know where they were!) and saying how the bushes and grass were dying, he gently shook his head, sucked his teeth and showed puzzled thinking on his face. I knew at that point, we were going to pay a lot. He hadn’t been trained in negotiation or even knew what conditioning was.
But in 20 years of visiting people, standing in the gardens and listening to their tree problems, he’d subconsciously calculated that if you manage the prospect’s expectations, you can change more. And he was doing exactly that. Managing my expectations better than some very good negotiators I know.
He should teach negotiation training – Not us!
What is Negotiation Conditioning?
It is managing someone’s expectations. Normally, telling someone that it’s hard to get what they need, and yet if they can do XYZ for you, somehow you can achieve it. We all manage expectations, we just don’t know we’re doing it and this is where it often goes wrong with customers.
A Typical Client and Account Manager Scenario
Client (He): ‘Can you produce 15 thousand widgets by next Tuesday?’.
Account Manager (She): ‘Let me ask production and come back to you.’
At this point is where it differs:
Client to a colleague: ‘I think they can do it. That would really get us out of the whatsit’.
Account Manager to a colleague: ‘He must be joking. 15,000 by Tuesday. He’ll be lucky if we can do 15′.
Unbeknownst, she had managed the client’s expectations. By telling him that she’d check and by not sharing any of her emotions, thoughts, or trepidation, the client took away from the call that 15,000 widgets by Tuesday were possible. She did nothing wrong, although an effective account manager or negotiator or influencer knows when to manage a client’s expectations. As she has not managed the clients’ expectations effectively, the next call goes like this:
Account Manager: ‘You know those widgets you wanted, well, we can’t do any. Well, apart from a few’.
Client: ‘What do you mean? I thought you said you could, I told everyone here that you probably could’.
Account Manager: ‘I didn’t say that. I said I’d check’.
Client: ‘I thought checking was just a formality’.
Then the call gets ugly because the client can not articulate conditioning and why he felt like he thought it would happen, so he turns to sanction negotiating because he now feels silly for thinking such a thing. His next step is, ‘Well, if you can’t do it we’ll need to find someone else, and maybe long term’.
Putting Negotiation Conditioning into Practise
Whatever negotiation conditioning you do, it has to be credible. The sucking of your teeth, like a builder, is a little cliche and ‘old hat’. If the other party asks for something then you might wince a little, shake your head a little, blow out through your mouth, or similar. There is no one piece of conditioning that works on its own. Conditioning is usually delivered by body language first and a few words second, like ‘That’s going to be tough’. It cannot be overplayed or underplayed and must be Goldilocks – ‘Just right’ for the situation.
You may decide to manage the other party’s expectations more than you need to. For example, they have made a proposal that you can achieve, yet you’ll condition them that it is possible but only if you can get xyz, also, in return. Exercising the phrase of ‘Under promising and over delivering’.
Just Right
Coming back to our widgets story above, the account manager could have originally said, ‘I have a feeling that we can’t do that because we are at capacity’. Then, when they return they might say, ‘Well, we can do a few’. Whilst the client won’t be happy, at least they weren’t left feeling as though it could be done. In fact, they left the call thinking nothing could be done.
There are some in the negotiation training world that might call conditioning a ‘professional flinch’. It’s about finding your managing expectations reaction – what works for you – which might be sucking your teeth, and then practising it and using it in negotiations. My preference is that you have a few reactiuons that you can use, that are simple combinations of the same words, an adjustment in body language and a type of face you use.
The Origin
The most famous example of conditioning was Ivan Pavlov’s experiment with dogs. The dogs salivated in response to a bell tone. He showed that when a bell was sounded each time the dog was fed, the dog learned to associate the sound with food.
Ultimately, the dog would then salivate just hearing the sound. Often this example is used to describe manipulative conditioning because we are talking about dogs, food and saliva. Yet, conditioning can be very positive because we genuinely want to manage someone’s expectations, like the example above where the account manager manages the clients’ expectations effectively.
People Just Want to Be Heard!
Another example of positive negotiation conditioning is listening. People just want to be heard, as this fact from a global study demonstrates:
74% of employees report they are more effective at their job when they feel heard.
If people feel like they have been heard, they will normally reward that listener. Next time you are negotiating and want to break a deadlock, listen. It can break a stalemate.
- Step 1: Explain that you are concerned that you don’t understand their point of view well enough.
- Step 2: Plus, manage their expectations – conditioning – with, you don’t know if you can fix it, but you would like to know more.
- Step 3: Ask questions to understand their point of view.
- Step 4: Summarise what you have understood.
- Step 5: Wait and see if the other person rewards you for listening. They normally will with something like, ‘Thank you for listening. How about we now see if we can find a way to get you what you need?’. If they don’t reward you, at least you now understand their problem, and you can instead say, ‘May I now share my problem? And then afterwards we can see what we can do together because we’ll completely understand both sides’.
Action: For even more useful content on negotiations, check out our ultimate guide on negotiation skills.
