Eric Sink wrote a nice essay “The one key thing to know about negotiation “. I just wanted to add a couple of my comments/observations.

1. It’s much easier to negotiate as you get richer. If this extra thousand dollars for the car does not really matter to you, the car dealer can feel it right away. They know that you CAN buy this car and are more willing to negotiate and drop the price. When a poor guy shows up, they are not sure if he’s going to buy it, so why bother wasting time on negotiating…

2. Eric’s example of negotiating while buying a Chevy would not apply to hot cars like Mini Cooper or Toyota Prius.

3. I’m not looking for job now, but hey… The job market is hot and I’m getting all these emails from recruiters. I do not tell them “I do not want this job now “. I always ask about the offered compensation . If they say it’s $X, I respond that I’ll do this job for $X+$Delta, which is higher than the current market rate. As Eric put it, I can easily walk away without getting this job. But who knows, one of these recruiters may say “OK, I’ll lower my markup and will pay your rate “.

4. It really helps if you are a pretty looking girl. Yesterday, a nice girl was entering the bus and she’s asked the bus driver if he’d be willing to stop by the Dunkin Donuts. There is no bus stop there, and usually bus drivers are getting angry if someone would ask them to stop at the wrong place. But she was really pretty, and he said yes.

You can come up with all rules and advices on how to do something, and than this nice girl walks in, just smiles to the salesman and gets the best deal in town 🙂