Learn to Play the Reluctant Seller When You’re Negotiating

Let’s say you’re desperate to sell your sailboat – you hardly use it, and the maintenance and slip fees are just too expensive. One day, you’re cleaning your boat when a wealthy-looking man and his companion pass by, compliment your boat, and ask you if it’s for sale. Despite your desperation, play Reluctant Seller.

Give them a tour of your boat, and as you walk through it, tell them what you love about it and how much you enjoy sailing it. Finally, say to them, “I can see how perfect this boat would be for you and how much fun you’d have with it. I don’t think I could part with it, but to be fair to you, what’s the best price you would give me?”

If you’ve done a good job of building the potential buyer’s desire to own the boat, he will have formed a negotiating range in his mind. He may be willing to go as high as $30,000 – while $25,000 would be a fair deal – and $20,000 would be a bargain.

If you appeared eager to sell, he may have offered you only $20,000 – but by playing Reluctant Seller, you may have moved him to the midpoint – or even to the high point of his negotiating range before the negotiations even started.

Similarly, I remember an oceanfront condominium that a female friend had bought as an investment. She was asking $59,000 for the condo, which was considered prime real estate at the time, and the potential buyer wasn’t sure how eager the owner was to sell it or if there were any other offers on it.

So he wrote up three offers: one at $49,000, another at $54,000, and a third at $59,000. He made an appointment to meet with the seller, who had moved out of the condo. After chatting with her, he discovered that she was indeed eager to sell and hadn’t had any other offers on it.

Of the three offers he had prepared, he first handed her the lowest one of $49,000. She accepted it – and when he sold the condo a few years later, it fetched $129,000. (You can only do this in a “For Sale by Owner” situation.)

When people do this kind of thing to you, it’s just a game that they’re playing on you. Good negotiators don’t get upset about it – they just learn to play the negotiating game better than the other side.

Three key points to remember:

1. Always play the role of Reluctant Seller.
2. Playing this gambit is a great way to squeeze the other side’s negotiating range before the negotiation even starts.
3. The other side will typically give away half its negotiating range just because you use this gambit.