Negotiation
Most endeavors, at least initially, include a transaction. In a lot of your transactions, the only influence or control you have is whether to buy or not. For example, Dillons won’t negotiate the price of lettuce with me. I either buy it for their listed price, purchase it somewhere else or don’t get it. That, in and of itself, is powerful long-term in that if enough people stop buying lettuce at Dillons, they must either find a way to sell it for less or stop selling it.
Other transactions involve negotiation. For example, most vehicles are still bought using a negotiation process. You either offer the salesperson a price or they offer you a price. Usually, there is a multi-step process where the salesperson goes to “check” with the manager and then returns with a counteroffer.
My wife told me years ago that if a dealer really wanted to sell a vehicle to us, they’d agree to our offered price. I disagreed. I understood the dealer had to pay for the vehicle (or borrow money to get it) to make it available to sell. In addition, they have their own overhead of electricity, insurance and labor costs they must cover. So, no, no matter how much they want to sell a vehicle, at a certain point, they’ll say “no sale.”
As part of my job, I negotiated several agreements. I would say the worst position you can get in contract negotiations is when you get to a take-it-or-leave-it situation. Contract negotiations, especially if you haven’t done many of them, are emotional activities. You want to win. There is a tendency, even when you are close to consensus on the price, to rush and get to the take-it-or-leave-it stage.
If you ever get to that stage, the other party can take it or leave it. I’ve seen negotiations fall apart because one party got to that point and the other party said, “Leave it,” even though they were close to a consensus. If both parties can’t live with compromising their bid anymore (like the car dealer that can’t afford to sell a car for less than what they have in it) that is ok. If the deal falls through because one party is so emotionally involved and doesn’t want to lose, that is a lost opportunity.
The same thing happens with personal disagreements. If two people argue and the disagreement becomes emotional, there is a tendency to threaten to end the relationship if the other party doesn’t change their point of view. Sometimes this is appropriate (irreconcilable differences in a marriage), but most of the time, both parties lose because the relationship falls apart.
“So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” - 2 Timothy 2:22-26 ESV
“And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”” - Matthew 22:37-40
