On Sunday afternoon, I was meeting a friend at the school gym to workout. Upon our arrival, we noticed that the gym closed early because of the Labor Day holiday. I have been a member of another gym called Maximus for several months and I knew Maximus was open. In the past I had noticed that Maximus was offering free trial passes, allowing members to bring friends in to try the gym. We went to Maximus to see what we could negotiate.
Upon arriving at Maximus we were sent to see a sales councilor. His interest was in selling my friends a membership. Our interest was strictly getting to use the gym that day for free. My friend had no interest in becoming a member because the school gym was free. We presented our position as possibly wanting to join after he tried the gym out. We did not disclose our true interest and gave the councilor the perception we believed would strengthen our position. To my surprise the sales councilor did not use any of the wide variety of approaches used to discover our underlying interest. He failed to take my friend on a tour around the gym, ask about why he wants to work out, or even ask him why he didn't want to join today. The sales councilor, assuming price was our only interest, immediately initiated a distributive bargaining method of negotiation focusing only on price.
Because price was not our interest, both the express and implied messages sent to the sales councilor made him believe that our position was pretty strong and his was very weak. He continued to drop the price of the membership and actual came down so low that the offer given to my friend was cheaper than the price I was paying. I then proceeded to request that he lower my membership dues to that price as well, he agreed. After getting the price to what we believed was the sales councilors reservation point, I proceeded to negotiate a two week clause that would allow my friend to cancel without a penalty and get a full refund.
Essentially from our perspective we got the free pass; however, I am sure that many members fail to cancel within the two weeks. The sales councilor may also be under the assumption that since we got such a great deal my friend would not cancel anyways.
This experience taught me that it is impossible to effectively negotiate an agreement when you do not understand the interests of the other party. I am certain my friend will cancel in two weeks but at least my dues were reduced.
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