A friend of mine called me up the other day seeking advice. She was on her way to sign her first apartment lease and wanted to know if I had any tips on negotiating the rent.<\/p>\n
I guess when you subside by doing your own thing with no perceptible means of gainful employment for years on end people just assume you have some deeper knowledge of wheeling and dealing. Negotiation, however, isn’t exactly something that comes naturally to me. In fact, I usually defer situations involving this skill to my beloved Vidya who could probably bargain her way out of quicksand.<\/p>\n
None the less I will impart my advice on this subject which I’m sure I have gathered over the years in no small part thanks to Vidya.<\/p>\n
Tip 1 – Is this a negotiable situation? (Vid would probably say yes, anything situation is, but I’m a little more of a prude) So I recommend you do your homework. Figure out what precedents have been set. In the case of housing, is it a buyers market or a sellers market? What’s the other guy’s interest in negotiating?<\/p>\n
Tip 2 – Choose your battlefield. Heading to your lease-signing with bargaining for a lower rent in mind is not exactly the right venue. Do that and you’ll have one pissed off landlord. Negotiate early when both parties are prepared to engage in that process. Same applies to the creative field. Someone wants to buy your script? Awesome. Just don’t wait til you’re at the contract signing to start negotiating residuals. (Hahaha, residuals<\/em> for novice a writer… I kill me.)<\/p>\n Tip 3 – Be patient and say as little as possible. This is all about gathering information and is true of any similar situation. Interviewers pulls this routine all the time. The more quiet you are the more the person on the other side of the table is likely to want to fill that void with chit chat and the more they talk, the more you’ll find out about their motivations maybe even their emotions (emotions are negotiation death).<\/p>\n Tip 4, and probably the most important tip – Be able to walk away.<\/p>\n When my friend asked about negotiation tips the first thing I asked her was: How badly do want this apartment? She wanted it bad. In fact, she needed it. Need is Want’s ugly brother. In other words she didn’t have a leg to stand on where negotiation was concerned. Sure, you wouldn’t be haggling over something unless you wanted it but you have to know – from the outset – what your ceiling is and be able to walk away if the other guy won’t meet it.<\/p>\n In the creative field this might seem like the hardest tip to meet. After all, if you’re just some schmuck trying to make a name for himself and someone wants to buy your script then being able to walk away isn’t exactly something you’re going to want to do. But have a look back at the other tips and see if this is a situation you even want to be in. Do your research. Find out if the other guy is even willing to give you a fair price for your work. Find out out if they’re likely to do your work justice. And figure out what the project’s worth to you.<\/p>\n My friend decided to forgo negotiating for a lower rent. She may have gotten the decrease if she’d done her bargaining up front or had other housing options but unfortunately she’d missed that opportunity. Still, she got the apartment which is what she wanted and that’s the important thing.<\/p>\n Basically, I think a successful negotiation is when everybody walks away feeling like they got what they wanted. A very<\/em> successful negotiation is when the other guy walks away feeling like he got what he wanted when you know he could have gotten a lot more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Balancing what you want with being able to do without it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-from-the-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}