Negotiation Strategy: Detachment
In last week’s newsletter, Jere Metcalf and I discussed the negotiating strategies I learned from a Harvard instructor.
This week, I want to emphasize the importance of detaching from the outcome in Luxury Real Estate.
They Need to Know You’re Willing to Walk Away
Detaching from the outcome or showing you are willing to walk away is especially important when you interact and negotiate with wealthy, high net worth individuals. Share on XFor example, sometimes someone places an offer that’s below the asking price (we never have multiple offers in my market. We are selling a lot of real estate, but our prices still have not recovered from 2008). Thus, a lot of my sellers were taking a 25% hit when they sold their property.
Strategically Present the Offer to the Seller
In such situations where I have an offer that’s lower than the asking price, I’ll call the seller and say, “Hey, I have an offer on your house. The good news is I have an offer on your house, but the bad news is that it’s kind of low. I need your authorization to reject the offer.” The seller, of course, inevitably asks what the offer was. I then reply, “I’d really rather not say. It’s really low. I just need your authorization to reject the offer. It’s not legal for me to reject it without your permission. May I please have permission to reject the offer?” Of course, eventually, you will tell the seller what the offer was.
Why present a low offer this way?
Your seller will be more receptive because you’re demonstrating your detachment from the outcome and listening to their instructions – as opposed to telling the seller the low offer out of the gate and creating an impression that you are just trying to get a quick deal.
In the Luxury Real Estate industry, there can be a strong assumption that agents are attached to a deal because there are many who think that we are driven by deals and not by the relationship and best interest of the client. Indeed, detaching from the outcome is a salient strategy to combat this assumption.
Until next time, make it a great week.
