In the book "You Can Negotiate Anything", Herb Cohen suggests a simple way a salesperson can defend the pricing of her product to a potential customer - just display a printed price list! He says that if you give someone a printed price list, he will easily believe that the price is non-negotiable whether it is or not. (In Herb's view, the price is always negotiable.)
I would like to extend this idea: be a little suspicious of technology. The immediate motivation for this post is that in the last few days, I stopped getting any emails for moderation of comments. I assumed that no one was putting up comments and began to draw conclusions about the short-lived interest of the students!
Then I realized there had been a technical glitch and I had 48 comments waiting for my approval!
The same thing happens with Excel. People start drawing all kinds of conclusions from spreadsheets until they realize that there was an error in some formula and all the numbers were useless. I've found this - believe it or not - in a well-known Harvard Business School case study during a periodic review. :-)
And I may have mentioned in class the example of the multi-million dollar forecasting system of a world leading pharmaceutical company, which on our closer analysis happened to add absolutely zero predictive value!
So be prepared to be slightly suspicious of machine-produced reports and be ready to dig a little deeper...
3 comments:
Good morning sir,
computerized eye checking
computerized photography
computerized kundly
computerized key for your vehicle,lock
We can see this type of example in our nearby shops where shopkeeper try to influence people by the use of computer. Now these are obsolete because everyone aware of computer and its functions.
Thank you sir!
Sir,
you are right but how one can negotiate on printed Prices, that actually not applicable in India.
Thanks, Hulesh, Umesh. Abhishek, you *can* negotiate on printed prices. The MRP is the MAXIMUM retail price. I bought a fridge last year from a large retail chain (Spencer's) at about 20% below MRP and even below the listed sale price. I was not trying to negotiate (I normally don't) but the salesperson saw me hesitate and offered a further discount just like that.
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