“Luxury is perceptional. But negotiating for it is reality.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (Click to Tweet)
“Expert Advice On How To
Better Negotiate Luxury Brands”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
Whether negotiating for luxury brands as a buyer or seller, there are standard negotiation practices you should incorporate. And the questions that a negotiator should pose when dealing with luxury brands are the mindset of those involved, what they seek from obtaining the brand, and their perspective of value. While contention exists in every negotiation where luxury brands are concerned, a negotiator should consider probing deeper into those questions.
This article addresses how to better negotiate for luxury brands. Adhering to what follows will increase your chances of reaching a successful outcome when negotiating in this environment.
Positioning
As with any negotiation, how you position yourself and how others perceive you determines how you will be engaged. Thus, positioning helps you to negotiate better before the negotiation begins.
With luxury brands, before you attempt to negotiate them, you need to assess more of the effect your positioning will have as an enhancer to your negotiation efforts. Some buyers may be more deliberate about making larger price purchases, while sellers may have undisclosed reasons why they may not want to sell at a current offer.
For example, if you have sought to purchase a Rolex from a dealer, you most likely observed that they gently handled watches while adorned with white gloves. The white gloves are a subliminal signal of purity. And the handling of the timepiece with care symbolizes the care and concern that went into crafting them.
If you overlook the manner of care displayed during the presentation of this luxury item by not commenting on it, you may offend the seller. That might be a small overlooked slight, but it could lessen your chances of getting a better price through the negotiation process.
So, always consider the impact of positioning and how you can use it as an ally when you negotiate. That will enhance your chances of reaching a successful negotiation outcome.
Timing
When considering the timing of your offer, reflect on external occurrences that may impact a buying or selling decision (i.e., recession, monetary windfall, etc.). You might also reflect on the scarcity of the goods and the needs of the negotiators. That impacts what they are contemplating for purchase or sale.
Personal internal factors affect the acceptance of offers, too. Thus, the better you tie your propositions to the peak of your positional power in the negotiation through timing, the more significant will be your control in the negotiation process.
Research
Having insight into the motives of your negotiation counterpart will allow you a greater understanding of how they might react to a proposal in a given situation. And the way to gain that information is through research. Thus, the type of research you should consider will depend mainly on the party against whom you will be negotiating.
Points to consider are:
Will your negotiation counterpart be timid, moderate, aggressive? Is there a specific reason they are dealing with you that you can use as leverage? Who else has a stake in the outcome of the negotiation? How will time affect the negotiation? What role will fear play in the talks?
Those are but a few of the questions you should seek to answer in the research phase of the negotiation process.
Different motives motivate negotiators. One type of negotiator may attempt to align his desires with yours to enhance the probability of obtaining what he seeks. Another may take a win-lose perspective – the only way he wins is if you lose.
Understanding the source of one’s motivation from the research you gather will allow you to position yourself better before and during the negotiation. It will also be a way to signal the timing of the offers and counteroffers you make.
Understand Mindset
Understanding a seller or buyer’s mindset is critical to the negotiation process. It lends insight into positioning yourself and understanding the motivation behind their desires to sell or purchase. As part of understanding someone’s mindset, consider the temperament they may display before the negotiation. Then, during the talks, observe what causes their character to become altered.
Paying close attention to the altering temperament of negotiators, yours and the person with whom you are negotiating, will give you insight into how parties perceive the negotiation occurrences. And that will allow you the opportunity to shift with the twist and turns of the negotiation. It will also allow you more significant opportunities to control those maneuvering shifts.
Reflection
The difference in negotiation styles when negotiating luxury brands versus non-luxury brands is the higher-level price points and the perception of those about one another doing the negotiations. People with more resources may be less influenceable depending on the stakes. Then again, depending on the stakes, those same individuals may leap at what they perceive as the right luxury brand – they want the status of having it.
Nevertheless, you would still employ negotiation strategies of good negotiation practices. The suggestions provided previously point you in that direction. Accordingly, they will enhance your negotiation activities when you are engaged in luxury brand negotiation efforts. That will assist you immensely. And everything will be right with the world.
Remember, you’re always negotiating!
Check out this offer to learn more about negotiating better and reading body language!
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