Sex and Winning Business Negotiation

Editor’s Note: This is the sec­ond arti­cle in a series that con­tin­ues to explore the topic of negotiation.

Have you bar­gained for any­thing yet today?

No? Then I expect you’ve been alone in your home busi­ness office all day. We nego­ti­ate in lit­tle ways almost sub­con­sciously. I mar­vel when I watch my good friend nego­ti­ate with her grand­son (in the same way she did with his father) for what he will eat for lunch. I nego­ti­ate with myself for how much I will accom­plish before I am allowed a walk on the beach. My neighbor’s hus­band nego­ti­ates with the car­pen­ter for a lit­tle work on the side beyond the terms of the already agreed contract.

All of these tiny nego­ti­a­tions are under­taken with­out much con­scious thought and no prepa­ra­tion. They are also approached in com­pletely dif­fer­ent ways depend­ing on gender.

Why Don’t Women Ask?

There is a ter­rific book that I highly rec­om­mend every woman on the planet read — and it wouldn’t hurt most men to read it, either. In Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoid­ing Nego­ti­a­tion – and Pos­i­tive Strate­gies for Change, Linda Bab­cock tells us that 57 per­cent of male Carnegie Mel­lon grad­u­ate busi­ness stu­dents nego­ti­ate their start­ing salaries, while only 7 per­cent of women do so. Bab­cock pro­vides strong argu­ments that this is the rea­son male start­ing salaries are 7.6 per­cent higher than those of women.

OK, Chicks. Tell me. Why don’t we nego­ti­ate as often as men? Every­thing I’ve learned about nego­ti­a­tion proves to me that if we sim­ply do it, we are as good at the nego­ti­at­ing table as men and in some sit­u­a­tions we are bet­ter. Stud­ies have been made that show no sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between nego­ti­a­tion results reached by men than by women. There are more women home busi­ness own­ers than men, so why aren’t we nego­ti­at­ing more?

Cer­tainly how we were raised as chil­dren plays a part in how will­ing we are to start and take part in nego­ti­a­tion. For most women adults today, our par­ents pro­tected us more than they did our broth­ers. The boys were encour­aged to com­pete in sport­ing games where vic­tory is glo­ri­fied. As girls, we were encour­aged to play turn-​​taking games, where indi­rect com­pe­ti­tion guar­an­tees all play­ers share in the win.

My the­ory is that we women have fallen prey to stereo­type. What do you think? Con­sider these state­ments; do you believe them to be true or false…

• Men are com­pet­i­tive, manip­u­la­tive, win-​​lose nego­tia­tors who want to get good deals from their opponents.
• Women are accom­mo­dat­ing, win-​​win nego­tia­tors who seek to pre­serve exist­ing rela­tion­ships by mak­ing sure every­body leaves the table with a good deal.
• Men are dom­i­nant and authoritative.
• Women are pas­sive and submissive.
• When men and women inter­act, men talk longer and inter­rupt more often than women.
• Men use direct lan­guage, highly inten­sive per­sua­sive lan­guage and they are more effec­tive using this approach than women.
• Women use ten­ta­tive and def­er­en­tial lan­guage with more dis­claimers (“I think”; “you know”) than men use.
• Women are more sen­si­tive to non­ver­bal sig­nals than men.
• Men expect women to act like ‘ladies’ dur­ing bargaining.
• Men find it dif­fi­cult to com­pete against a female oppo­nent as they would a male opponent.
• Women are not com­fort­able in com­pet­i­tive situations.
• Men are humil­i­ated when they lose to a female opponent.
• Even when min­i­mally pre­pared, men believe they can ‘wing it’ and win.
• No mat­ter how thor­oughly pre­pared women are, they tend to feel unprepared.
• When men are suc­cess­ful, their vic­tory is due to dili­gent work and intelligence.
• When women are suc­cess­ful, their vic­tory is attrib­uted to luck or the aid of others.

True? False? Some­where between?

Yes.

The major­ity of these state­ments are at best mis­lead­ing and at worst bla­tantly false. What sad­dens me is that it’s likely that many of you believe some of the false­hoods. Here’s the bot­tom line — and this is a truth — women don’t nego­ti­ate as often as men even though we are just as good at it once we embrace the idea.

There are well estab­lished nego­ti­at­ing meth­ods and styles that are uni­ver­sally rec­og­nized and used. Each per­son will innately be bet­ter at some bar­gain­ing styles than oth­ers. Some­times your pre­ferred nego­ti­a­tion tech­nique will fall into gen­der pat­terns, but not always. Any­one can learn to use any bar­gain­ing method, no mat­ter your gen­der or per­son­al­ity or upbring­ing or rea­son for enter­ing into the nego­ti­a­tion. What it takes is rec­og­niz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to nego­ti­ate, learn­ing the tech­niques, and prac­tice, prac­tice, practice.

This topic is clearly too large to fully explore today. Don’t miss the next arti­cle in this series where we will begin to explore nego­ti­a­tion styles like con­tentious vs interest-​​based.

Learn How To Ask at She Nego­ti­ates!

And if you’d rather not wait, I can rec­om­mend a ter­rific online course that I promise will get you juiced up about nego­ti­a­tion. (No affil­i­ate action here, just a great course.) Check out the next FREE inter­ac­tive 90-​​minute vir­tual work­shop. It’s a real class in its own right. Vic­to­ria Pyn­chon, Esq. and Lisa Gates, cpcc will

• Dis­cuss why women need to learn to nego­ti­ate now more than ever, and how nam­ing our dreams and claim­ing our mar­ket value is imme­di­ately within our reach.

• Prac­tice the skills of col­lab­o­ra­tive, inter­est based nego­ti­a­tion now taught at the most pres­ti­gious busi­ness schools in the country.
• Under­stand the nego­ti­a­tion skills that boys are taught and girls are not and how to win despite this.
• Learn how we can stop work­ing 20 per­cent harder and 20 per­cent longer than our male coun­ter­parts, and close this per­sis­tent and seem­ingly intractable 33 cent wage and income gap sim­ply by ask­ing for it.

Oh, and if you are think­ing about tak­ing the full course, make sure you take the free pre­quel work­shop because there will be a spe­cial dis­count for par­tic­i­pants only offered on the call. Here’s the link to reg­is­ter. You can get more infor­ma­tion here.

Have you nego­ti­ated some­thing impor­tant to you recently? How did it go? Please share your thoughts and expe­ri­ence in the com­ments below.

Tagged as: bargaining, business, dispute resolution, gender, getting past no, home business ideas, home business information, home business office, home businesses, home expert, linda babcock, marketing, negotiate, negotiation, negotiation techniques, personal selling, sales, women