Day 26 – WorkStep Twelve: Who Wins The Best Deal? The Person Who Doesn’t Want It...

Years ago, in a market in Bangkok, I got incredible deals offered to me, and was amazed by my luck. However, as I progressed around the market, I realized why I was getting such great offers: they wanted my business more than I wanted their merchandise.

That is a sweet spot to be in. The second you “need” a thing, that “thing” is less likely to flow to you. Money does not flow to need, and neither does infatuated love. We all learnt this in love: it is the pursued, not the purser, who decides the rules of the game. The same principle applies in business deal-making.

Before you start to deal with people, ask this question: can I be happy if none of this works out? Unhappiness is wanting what you don’t have; happiness is wanting what you have, and deciding everything else is a bonus.

There’s a famous book with a terrible title that marketers and sellers the world over know and love: Robert Ringer’s Winning Through Intimidation. Actually, in the meaning of the book, “intimidation” is someone who wants what they have. When you don’t need a deal, and the other person does, who is in the stronger position?

This is also my work. I have lots of vision, ambition and desire to grow BodyChance, but I have learnt that these are all merely my hallucinations. None of it is real. However, if I start to believe it is real, if for example I start to believe that BCLA must grow one particular way, then I am in for a lot of stress. Hanging on to hallucinations is like trying to drink air – there’s nothing to drink, and nothing to hang on to either.

Other than my hallucinations, what exists? Two people talking in a room. One content, one desperate. Who is going to make the best deal?

This brings in another idea worth remembering as you start deal-making: the zig-zag. No deal is ever going to work out the way you originally imagined it would. If you try to keep to a concept that is proving unworkable, the best strategy is to reverse direction, look another way – ask what can both of us get out of this?

When giving up is perfectly Ok for you, paradoxically that can keep you in the conversation with curiosity. So in the final analysis, BCLA is a concept right now, not a reality. Maybe it will work out, maybe it won’t – but I am having fun learning about how to make it work.

Let the same be true of your own plans. Talk to people, imagine outrageously, but keep wanting what you already have as you make the deal to get a bonus….

Back to the Bangkok markets: the vendor would try to sell, sell, sell to me and I would smile, appreciate his offer, show genuine interest. I would thank them, and start to walk away and that is when I got the best deal. 

I wasn’t walking away as a strategy, I was walking away. Sometimes, they didn’t me call back. Sometimes they did. Either way, I was content.

TOMORROW: WorkStep Twelve – Go It Alone, Or Make You A Team?

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