Part of my joy of working at Hewlett-Packard was that I became friends with Jeff M. Jeff and I were assigned to back each other up on our respective commodities as well as do “team” negotiations when there was a particularly difficult contract negotiation in the works. Whenever there was a difficult contract our boss kept it in her mind that I was raised Jewish and that Jeff came from good Scottish ancestry. During these negotiations she would “pull” the current team and send in the “Scot and the Jew”.
So it really surprised me when Jeff came into work one Monday morning and he was in a vile mood. Being a concerned friend I asked Jeff, “Who pissed in your Cheerio’s this morning?” Jeff proceeded to tell me his tale of woe dealing with a car salesman. Jeff’s wife wanted a new Nissan Maxima and the dealer wouldn’t negotiate a lower price on the car because it was the hot car to have that year, if I remember correctly it was about 1989.
I asked Jeff what negotiation tactic he was using and he told me that he was going into see the salesman on the way home from work every other night for about 2 weeks. They would talk, the salesman would then go into the manager’s office and come out with no we can’t go lower.
It appeared to be a stale mate and I told Jeff he was doing this all wrong. Jeff said to me, “Like you think YOU could get this clown to come down in price?” I just smiled at Jeff and told him that if he follows my instructions to the letter, his wife will be driving a brand new Nissan Maxima the following Monday and he will get it for the price he was willing to pay.