(Continued from page 17)   For example, if you sell machine tools and you know of a large number of pending orders that will come in soon, a short delay on the buyer’s part may mean a month or two extra delay in getting their equipment.

The bottom line on Speed Up is, don’t flimflam the buyer with dire warnings of things that are likely not to happen. You’re just going to lose credibility. If you have something real on the horizon, then that’s the time to use Speed Up to move things along more quickly.

We know from our negotiation education programs for buyers that they almost never use the speed up techniques. Now I’m not talking about getting a proposal in. Buyers always want you to get the proposal in yesterday and then take forever deciding what to do.

I’m talking about when you are actually in the middle of a negotiation. If suddenly the buyer seems to be trying to speed up the process, that’s very interesting indeed and it probably isn’t a tactic.

Is there perhaps some urgent time pressure that you didn’t know about? This is a good time to start probing time pressures again, because maybe if there is one, the buyer’s LAS might be a lot higher than you originally thought before you knew of their time pressure.