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.”

You will then get down to the wire in the negotiation with a few unresolved issues, including their straw man. Now, the deal will revolve around your trying to get them to relinquish the straw man, which of course you don’t recognize as a straw man, in return for major concessions on your part in other areas.

The basic defense against the straw man is to train yourself to recognize when the buyer is not being totally straightforward about what is important to them. Watch for things that seem excessive, or don’t seem to make sense. Then watch to see if the buyer tries to use them to extract concessions.

At that point, you will need to start asking a lot of questions, starting with the negotiator’s favorite question, why, a key point in negotiation training. Often, when you really press, they will back off, go to another subject, and you will never hear of that straw man again.

Occasionally, when you really press, you will uncover a true and serious problem that your customer has, and now you can move into problem solving mode, as explained in the negotiation seminar, to try to fix it.

Another way to deal with potential straw men, if you don’t feel comfortable pressing the “why question,” or the information you get doesn’t clarify whether or not it is a straw man, is to simply ignore it.

Sometimes it will go away. If none of that works and you’re down to the end game with just their straw man on the table and a few things they want from you, you might simply say, “We just can’t do what you want.

What do you need in order to give up on that issue?” If they then say, “Well, we could give up on this item if you could come down another 10%” or some such similar statement, now you know that you have a straw man since suddenly this critical item is tradable for a reduction in price.

Often at this point, a firm “no” or a very tiny concession may well close the negotiation.

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