Right now, I have two messages in my voice mail, awaiting my instantaneous reply.
And they will be awaiting that reply for the better part of this morning.
I’m sending them a message of my own, one that is powerful and highly potent.
But my message has no words or tones, or specific content.
My message is SILENCE.
Silence is golden; the expression says, and it is on target, especially during certain negotiations.
If you want to express your power, your position, your options, doing it instantly and verbally may not be the best approach. Here’s why:
(1) You’re going to seem too eager to get a deal done. Enthusiasm is great in lots of business situations, but negotiation isn’t one of them. Once somebody knows you’re hot to trot, he’ll exploit it.
(2) Silence promotes anxiety and uncertainty in your counterparts, and that’s good for you. They’ll become more impulsive, more likely to overcompensate you, just to put the deal behind them.
(3) Silence says you have other options, you don’t NEED this deal, or else. Always, a person with options is more attractive and powerful to a suitor.
(4) Silence will determine just how serious they are. Will they communicate again, and how long will it take? If they can wait, they’re smart, and they’ll be turning the tables on you. No problem, you can snap the drought by contacting them, without losing clout.
(5) If you lose the deal, because you waited and they had viable number twos and threes waiting in the wings, you were not in a very strong position with them, anyway. You and your offer came across as generic, as interchangeable commodities, and this is a positioning problem that should be corrected.
Remember, though, there is a difference between silence and rudeness.
If you promised to follow-up at a specific time, good manners require you to do it, so it’s better to just say, “I’ll get back to you.”
Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone®, You Can Sell Anything By Telephone! and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.
