Strawman 

Although a salesperson may occasionally use the strawman negotiating tactic, it tends to be more of a buyer tactic. Basically what the buyer will do it is make one or more demands on you that they say are very important to them, but which, in fact, are not terribly important to them.

The idea is to have you make concessions in areas that are really important to them, in return for which they give up their straw men. This tactic will only work if their demands are for something that is either difficult or impossible for you to agree to.

If their demand is for something that is very easy for you to agree to, it will look to you like the makings of an asymmetrical trade, something that is high value to them and low cost to you.

However, when you try to use it as an asymmetrical trade - a term explained in the negotiation seminar - it will collapse of its own weight since what they just said was so important turns out not to be very important, and they really aren’t going to give up anything in order to get it.

However, as you see in the negotiation training program, when what they are demanding is difficult or impossible, such as a delivery schedule that you can’t meet, a fill rate that is simply impossible to achieve, very tight specifications that are beyond your ability to produce, or similar things, the straw man tactic can be extraordinarily effective if you don’t spot it.

What will generally happen is that after the buyer has made the demand on you and you have said you can’t do it, the buyer will say, “OK, let’s go on to some other issues and come back to it later.” (continued on page 6)

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