By Matt Young 

These days, the China price that is not seriously negotiated is too high. In fact, if you’re not fiercely negotiating, you might as well buy from American vendors.

Case in point: I wasn’t in my right mind yesterday when I paid 25 yuan (US$3.67) for a paperback first published in 1955 by John F. Kennedy. That’s highway robbery considering I bought it not on Amazon.com, but from a street peddler selling it illegally in Beijing.

Used copies of this book on Amazon, by the way, go for a cent and a new one is worth US$4.90.

Does 25 percent off the value of a new copy sound like a good China price to you? 

No, I got ripped off because I didn’t negotiate.

But think about it, even when you bargain, how confident are you that you got the best price possible? In China, I rarely am.

The DK Essential Managers series has an excellent, quick read (72 pages) on negotiating skills.

The best tip is to be clear about what you want, and this can be surprisingly difficult.

Say, for instance, that deep down, the most important thing was that I pay 10 yuan for the Kennedy book. Really, it was, as that’s what it costs me for a new DVD in Beijing, so why should an old paperback be more?

Well, even if I had bargained the price down to 15 yuan, I still wouldn’t have been happy because I didn’t reach my target price.

If, however, I convinced the vendor to sell me ten books for a total of 100 yuan, I would have been happy, because I would have achieved my target price. Yes, I would have had to pay more overall, but I would have gotten the Kennedy book for 10 yuan (my target), and a lot of other good books for the same price.

This is a simplistic way to understand the importance of clarity in a negotiation. But there’s an even better way:

1. Make a list of your objectives. Ideally, before buying books the other day, I would have listed: price, quality and quantity. Notice that I would have already become better aware of various ways to bargain – not just about price but also on issues of quality and quantity.

2. Prioritize objectives to be aware what you can give up without giving away what you really want. You could prioritize them as first, second, third, etc.; or you could assign each a numeric value to capture more fully the degree of prioritization. In my case, I would have given price a value of “10,” quality a value of “5” and quantity a value of “3.” Considering quantity was of least value, I could have bargained for a better price on the Kennedy book while offering to buy more books without compromising my values.

3. Identify and prioritize the objectives of your opponent, in this case, the seller. I’d say he’s most interested in quantity (which I’d suppose is a 10 for him), because the more he sells, the more he makes. He’d be interested in price (perhaps a 7 for him) because he wants to sell for profit. And quality probably isn’t all that important for him (a 3), because he’s not doing the reading, although he does want to convince others to read his books. Considering his highest valued priority is my lowest valued, that’s probably a point of negotiation, and one that probably would have worked successfully. I say “probably” because when you get into a negotiation, you have to reassess your opponent’s values based on what they’re saying and doing. Your initial evaluation of your opponent may not have been correct.

Of course, having clarity in negotiation is just the beginning. In serious, complex negotiations for millions of dollars, even the seating arrangement of negotiators becomes important. So does the timing of refreshments.

But there’s nothing like having clarity of mind to begin with. You won’t just be able to sleep at night after difficult negotiations. You’ll be able to look yourself in the mirror all day long with confidence that this is someone that gets what he wants because he knows what he wants.

Matt Young, Bizcult