During negotiations, both parties need to be flexible for an agreement to be reached. That usually means each party makes a series of concessions. So, do you say, “thank you” when your counterparty gives you something? What if the concession is inadequate?
According to one definition of the Cambridge English dictionary thank you is “said to politely accept or refuse something that has been offered to you”, as in “thank you” or “no, thank you”. But when someone offers you a concession in a negotiation that’s not quite what you wanted or not quite enough, either meaning of “thank you” does not seem to fit the situation.
Then again, not thanking would be inappropriate too. Though you didn’t get enough of what you wanted, you still got something. Perhaps something the other party had gone to great lengths to get authorisation to concede. And while it’s good to be polite, there is an even more important reason to thank the supplier for a concession given during a negotiation.
Why you should say thank you in negotiations
Psychologically, if you say “thank you” the concession is yours. It’s in your pocket. The supplier can’t take it back. But there’s a problem. Saying “thank you” also indicates agreement, and since the concession is inadequate, how could you possibly agree?
If instead, you dismiss the concession as being not enough or not being of the right kind, social convention dictates that the supplier could reasonably say, “okay, don’t have the concession, then”. And if the supplier takes the concession back, you would be back to square one with a negotiation that has not advanced. The reality is that in a negotiation you won’t get everything you want in one go (if at all). The name of the game is, therefore, to keep moving forward until no further movement is possible or desirable.
How you should say thank you to avoid premature agreement
So, the solution is to say “thank you” without agreeing to the adequacy of the concession. That way you can have it both ways. From a psychological point of view, the concession is yours, never to be taken away from you. At the same time, you make it clear that you need more for a legal commitment to a deal to be possible. That kind of “thank you” is called “thank and bank”.
It goes something like this, “Thank you, that’s a step in the right direction…”. You show appreciation for the concession. You own it. And you need more. It’s a simple and straight forward technique that has worked well for me over the past 20 years. There is, of course, much more to negotiating than saying “thank you” in the right way and at the right time. In the articles How to Negotiate Great Supplier Contracts and How to unlock a deadlocked negotiation, I share some more tips.
