A man walks into a car showroom...

Negotiation 1.01 : How not to look like a total idiot on the world stage

A Saturday Brexit Facts4EU.Org sketch – A must-read for all Remainer MPs

You walk into a car showroom. After some milling around the vehicles on display you find one you like and a hovering salesman approaches. You start negotiating. It soon becomes a long process…

Two years later your wife and most of the extended family show up and start imposing their views. They don’t like your choice of German people-carrier, but they like the other vehicles on offer even less. At this point you’re still telling the salesman that if he doesn’t budge on his position you will go over the road and buy from his competitor, who sells vehicles from all around the world.

The rumblings from your family become more audible – from brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, and some distant relatives. Even your aunts and uncles are there, having travelled from ‘another place’.

Families...

Just as you feel you might be making some progress with the salesman, all of your family start talking at once. They disagree variously on many features of the model of people-carrier you’ve chosen. The common theme which they tell you loudly – so that the salesman can hear – is that under no circumstances whatsoever must you buy from the international car showroom opposite.

You must buy from this vendor, they insist, and what’s more you must do so before 29 March. One distant relative, a short-tempered man with white hair and a prickly beard, even tells you that he will not talk to you again unless you immediately and openly rule out buying from the showroom across the street.

This last ultimatum is tempting to decline immediately on the basis that it would be a blessing. Unfortunately the problem you face is that various members of the family will be travelling in your vehicle. If you want to keep the family broadly together you have to listen to what they all say.

You gather your relatives into a group and try to explain the situation, sotto voce.

“Look,” you whisper, “it’s not just the car itself. This salesman’s insisting that he will only sell us the thing if we sign up to a whole raft of extras.

“We have to take out an open-ended, annual servicing contract and the costs are huge. We also have to buy their high-priced insurance which means we can’t go compare. We even have to bring the vehicle here to be valeted regularly, for heaven’s sake.

“They also want to have legal control over part of our driveway as part of the deal. And don’t even talk to me about the clause saying we have to obey the showroom’s rules on where we go, and how fast we go, and what we can carry in the thing.”

For reasons you can’t begin to fathom your family still looks determinedly against you, so you plough on with your trump card.

“Listen you idiots, you know the trade-in of our existing car? Well guess what? They want our old car and they even insist that we pay them to take it, rather than them paying us for it. And they want ten times what it’s worth.”

“And anyway, that salesman blighter’s French,” you add, even though you know this won’t go down well with some family members who have received national honours from the salesman’s home country.

Sadly your efforts are in vain. Your family haven’t got the first clue about Chapter 1.01 of basic negotiation rules:-

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