---
title: "When Negotiating, Concede to the Right"
description: "Negotiation is ubiquitous in management, sales, and marketing. This article discusses the paradox of concession in negotiation, arguing that one should never make unilateral concessions on key interests but instead trade concessions on secondary points to achieve mutual benefit, illustrated with both failed and successful examples."
author: "程烈"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2014-09-02"
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# When Negotiating, Concede to the Right

> Negotiation is ubiquitous in management, sales, and marketing. This article discusses the paradox of concession in negotiation, arguing that one should never make unilateral concessions on key interests but instead trade concessions on secondary points to achieve mutual benefit, illustrated with both failed and successful examples.

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Negotiation is everywhere.
As a special type of interpersonal relationship, negotiation widely exists in management, sales, and market behaviors.

1. The most common is the negotiation behavior of business personnel. But it is also a behavior that is often misread and misjudged. People often think that sales is just holding samples and price lists hoping the other party accepts; purchasing is making the other party accept the lowest price. The reality is not that simple. For example: the motivation for deep distribution is to help distributors find and master the reasons for consumers to accept the product, not just to make the distributor accept the product. So the purpose of deep distribution is to enhance the channel's market negotiation capability.

Of course, negotiation is not just through words. Preparing things that help the other party accept our quotation and displaying them in front of the other party are all negotiation. For example: store image, POP, display methods, etc. are all negotiation.

2. Advertising also serves as negotiation. As a paid communication method, its fundamental purpose is to get as many customers as possible to accept what we offer, including products, prices, payment methods, and our expected sales volume. So advertising provides the reason for customers to buy. When we face many large-scale customers, relying solely on sales personnel's manual negotiation can no longer make a huge potential customer group negotiate with us simultaneously and accept our benefit plan. So we need to take the purchase reasons that sales personnel use to persuade customers in face-to-face negotiations, express them through mass communication elements such as sound, image, shape, and advertising slogans, and deliver them to our potential consumers through various media. At this time, the consumer's negotiation opponent is the advertisement and the media. Of course, such negotiation behavior is obviously less efficient than manual negotiation, but because advertising has a very low average personal negotiation cost, it is accepted by everyone.

From this, we conclude: if advertising's selling power is insufficient, its essence is that advertising's negotiation power is insufficient.

3. In the process of studying execution, we found that what guides employees to act spontaneously and consciously is not just communication; effective negotiation actually plays a decisive role.

When we break down work goals to employees, employees will reinterpret and plan the goals from the perspective of their own interests. This automatic goal change by employees leads to low or unstable execution. The solution to this phenomenon is that when goals are broken down and responsibilities assigned to positions, a negotiation must be conducted with employees. The main content of the negotiation will be: the reasons the company sets the goals; the benefits that achieving the goals will bring to employees; and the loss of benefits if the goals are not achieved. In foreign enterprises, organizations like unions and employee interest groups represent employees in such negotiations with employers. In our enterprises, there is currently a lack of such organizations for work negotiations. Perhaps people think internal negotiations will lead to intensified internal conflicts, but in fact, effective internal negotiations help employees and the company clarify the meaning and interests of work goals. For example: a company wants to hold a national distributor conference, and according to convention, the sales department organizes it. The company requires that this conference should be innovative in form, but the sales department employees think the previous ones were already good, and everyone is busy now, so there is no need to spend more time on the conference. Usually, the general manager would use communication to clearly tell the sales department employees the company's intentions, but this time the general manager felt that even if everyone understood the company's intentions, they would still act according to their own ideas during execution, so he decided to conduct a negotiation with the sales department employees on this matter. The negotiation content included: demonstrating the overall plan, clarifying operating procedures, establishing division of labor and job responsibilities, setting up inspection mechanisms, and rewarding or punishing employees' behavior in the conference. At the same time, he pointed out: if employees have better plans than the established one, the company can adopt them, but if employees cannot propose better plans, they must implement the company's plan. As a result, that distributor conference was unprecedentedly successful, fully realizing the company's strategic intention of stabilizing the channel.

The Paradox in Negotiation Practice
The core task of negotiation is that one party attempts to persuade the other party to understand, allow, or accept the viewpoint they propose. In layman's terms, negotiation is: making the other party do things according to their own ideas while also conforming to our wishes.

However, this may just be a beautiful wish of all negotiators. When our negotiation position is relatively weak; when our opponent is very tough and difficult; when our negotiation goals are far from achievable. We suddenly find that the other party seems not to or simply cannot do things according to our wishes.

Famous negotiation expert Gavin Kennedy posed this question to those aspiring to become negotiation experts: "When facing a difficult opponent, the better approach is to make a small concession first to gain the other party's goodwill." It is said that this question is a "touchstone" for negotiation ability. Those who answer "yes" will be judged as having an incorrect basic attitude towards negotiation behavior, because as long as you make concessions, the opponent will press step by step, leading you to give up more interests. In our training and consulting process, we often use this question to test trainees, but almost all trainees are puzzled by it. Their reason is: in negotiation practice, there is no successful case without concessions, unless it is called "administrative order."

We recognize a paradox about negotiation: "Concession will lead to the opponent pressing step by step; not making concessions may lead to the opponent terminating the negotiation because they cannot get the benefits they want."

Do we need to make concessions during negotiation? Yes. But not an inch, unless in exchange.

**A Failed Example**
Among sales managers, there is a saying: "The sales volume plan made with great effort at the beginning of the year turns into a joke at the end of the year." So some sales managers think that sales is not worth making a big effort to plan, because customers and the market change too fast and too much. After years of practice and research, we found that there are many reasons for this situation, but the improper concessions made by sales personnel during negotiations with customers are an important reason.

A salesperson signed an annual sales volume plan with a distributor as follows:
In the first month, it happened to rain, affecting the customer's actual sales. The customer hoped to reduce the month's sales target. The salesperson thought the customer was reasonable, and after "arguing with reason" with the boss, the boss agreed to reduce the sales target to 400,000, and instructed that the "owed" 100,000 target must be made up in February. At that time, the salesperson and the distributor agreed and thanked repeatedly. The second month the market momentum was good, and the salesperson was delighted, thinking: this month seems to be able to complete the target and also make up for last month. As two-thirds of the month passed, the distributor requested the company to support receivables, citing insufficient funds to purchase goods. The company refused the distributor's request, and as a result, the distributor only completed 400,000 in sales that month. By the fourth month, the salesperson and the distributor summarized the sales situation over the period. The distributor believed that the annual sales target was unreasonable and listed various reasons. The salesperson felt that the distributor was not unreasonable; when setting the target, he also felt that the company was suspected of pressing targets on them. So he reported the distributor's request to the manager, listing many facts to prove: the current market is different from the market at the time of the annual plan, and there are many difficulties. Of course, the company ignored their opinions and did not reiterate the sales plan target. However, in the hearts of the salesperson and the distributor, they had long stopped taking the plan seriously. They both believed that the plan was just a "theory" for those who only know how to "crawl on paper," and the truth was in the hands of these practical people. Sure enough, at the end of the year, the sales plan was indeed not completed, the "practical faction" won, the company suffered greatly, and the sales manager was removed as a "scapegoat." Of course, the story does not end there. As long as the boss of this enterprise can still find a way to get money, the story will repeat and continue.

The salesperson's initial goodwill concession led to the distributor pressing step by step, and ultimately, when the salesperson could no longer turn the tide on the sales target, he stood on the side of the negotiation opponent: the distributor.

**Comment: When Negotiating, Concede to the Right**
If in the first month, the company did not make a concession on the sales target (because the sales performance in the first month after the agreement was just signed is a serious matter for both parties), but instead increased market support; if in the second month, the company, while refusing the receivables request, actively helped the distributor develop the market and conduct channel financing for him; if... the distributor would not have disregarded the sales target.

The so-called "concede to the right" means: for any negotiation opponent, do not make frontal concessions, because that is our key interest, such as price, payment methods, and sales volume. We can make concessions on other points that are secondary to us (but important to the other party). For example: helping sales, personnel support, advertising, promotion, delivery cycle, delivery method, assisting management, etc.

**A Successful Example**
Ade is the sales manager of a beverage company. KA stores and distributors account for 40% and 60% of total sales respectively. According to the agreement signed with KA stores at the beginning of the year, the stores have the right to require the manufacturer to supply goods promptly within the range of 70%-150% of the planned volume in the agreement.

Since July, most parts of the country have experienced continuous high temperatures, and the demand for beverages has surged. The factory is working overtime, but the market is still in short supply. Seven days ago, the KA store requested an additional order of 200,000 cases; the day before yesterday, they added 100,000 cases; today, they added another 50,000 cases. Ade has already sent all 40,000 cases in stock, but it is far from meeting the store's requirements. The store just sent an email reminding Ade that according to the agreement, the manufacturer must meet the store's supply requirement of 150% of the planned volume, otherwise the store will take further measures. At the same time, the store also reminded: it is understood that the manufacturer has recently sent at least 500,000 cases to its distributors, to which the store expresses serious protest.

As a beverage brand that was only launched last year, Ade is deeply delighted with this year's sales momentum. Apart from the weather, it seems that this year's market efforts have not been in vain. Ade decided to reply to the store's email, hoping to take this opportunity to change the negotiation position with the store. The full text of the email is as follows:

Thank you very much for your support over the past year. We are honored to have a partner like you. The sudden continuous high temperature has made both of us feel the enthusiasm of the market. This enthusiasm, confirmed by meteorological evidence, will continue for some time. We attach great importance to your feelings about the current supply situation. For better cooperation between both parties, we suggest the following:

1. We hope to add refrigerated cabinets at your checkout counters. The cabinets will be provided by us, and you provide the space and usage fees for the cabinets;
2. Please increase the quantity of our products (no less than 200 bottles) in the beverage ice experience area;
3. If you can meet these requests, it further proves that our cooperative relationship is already very harmonious. Of course, we are also very willing to supply you with 40% of our daily production;
4. If you have no objection to our suggestions, I will personally deliver the goods tomorrow and sign a document with you on the consensus we have reached.

Looking forward to your reply.

Analysis:
During the negotiation process, the place where the other party strongly demands our concession is where the other party's need for negotiation interests lies. At this time, if we make appropriate concessions, we have the opportunity to exchange for greater concessions from the other party in other aspects (remember: when making concessions, the other party must also make concessions in other aspects). So when the other party is furious with you or aggressive towards you, it is also the time when their interest needs are fully exposed. For example: when employees have great complaints about wages and benefits, it is not a crisis for the company but an opportunity, because managers can exchange concessions on compensation and benefits for greater labor productivity from employees. What is feared is that the other party has no opinions but also no actions.

It should be reminded that many negotiators know this principle, but in negotiation practice, they often cannot propose alternative negotiation conditions. This is mainly because they do not have a multi-faceted and comprehensive grasp of the interests they need to obtain. So they stubbornly hold on to one or a few negotiation conditions, either leading to a deadlock due to rigidity, or being forced to make concessions and then losing control.

Only by exploring more interest points that one side needs to obtain around a certain negotiation can "concede to the right" be truly realized. Flexible concessions lead to successful negotiations and maximize the interests of both parties.

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