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zeitgeist
Story Dave Donelson Illustration Robert Pizzo
The Art Of The Deal
The pros reveal how to negotiate your way to success.
Last year, Blake Taylor closed a $3.4 million deal he’d thought would be impossible. “I thought it was priced too high at first, but it worked out that we finally got the asking price.” The pro- cess took months of soliciting offers and going back and forth with potential buyers. As Taylor, the owner of Synergy Business Brokers in New Rochelle, explains, “The key to that deal was patience. The first few offers were too low, so we had to have stick-to-itiveness.”
You may not be working on multi-million-dollar deals very often, but it’s a given if you’re in business that you negotiate something every day—maybe every hour. Trying to land a con- tract with a new client? There will probably be some give and take on terms. Proposing to sell your services? Your customer may have a different idea about their worth than you do. Hiring a new employee? Even after the salary is set, there are myriad details that need approval by both of you. Depending on the circumstances, you could also be on the opposite side of every one of those transactions.
“Any time two people come at something with different ideas, negotiation is involved,” says Eric Marks, principal of Business Advisory Services and HR Consulting at Marks Paneth in Tarrytown. Customers, landlords, tenants, vendors, employ- ees, partners—the better your negotiation skills, the stronger and more successful your relationships with them will be. “A success-
ful negotiation is where both parties come away happy,” Taylor says. “They may not be happy with everything, but overall each party got the main things that they wanted.”
Attorney Josh Meyer of Pannone Lopes Devereaux & West, LLC, in White Plains pretty much specializes in negotiation and says it doesn’t have to be painful or antagonistic. In fact, he advises, “You want to create the win-win whenever you can because you want the deal to work for the long term. If you push too much, things can fall apart later.” His firm handles projects such as requests for proposals and lease negotiations for Nassau Coliseum.
So how do you negotiate transactions in which both par- ties win?
KnOwleDge is pOwer
Start by knowing what everybody at the table really wants—including yourself. “You really have to decide what’s important to you,” Marks says. “What will you walk away from? If I know what I’m trying to accomplish and know how flexible I am, I can listen clearly because I don’t have to think about my own position while the other person is talking. I can avoid defensiveness and other negative reactions that can derail my ability to communicate clearly.”
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