Negotiation/bargaining skill is very essential to keep yourself safe from getting ripped off. Your trip to India will be full of instances where you need to apply your negotiation/bargaining skills from taking cabs from the airport to buying souvenirs for your family and friends back home. Although negotiation/bargaining looks very simple. But in reality, it is complex in nature as there are no guidelines or scientific formulas which you can follow. You must have met or seen a lot of people who are very good negotiators/bargainers but it is a hard fact that nobody can negotiate 100% correctly, they could only get as close as possible because nobody in the world has complete knowledge of each and every product and it’s cost. In this blog, I will make it simpler for you by suggesting certain tricks which I use in my everyday life and also advising my traveller’s to apply them. Before I start, I want to define negotiation skills as a mind game that you are playing in order to achieve a better deal. I want to give you a 5 pointer exercise which will help you win.
- Window shopping- We all do window shopping every now and then. But this can also be a very helpful tool to get you through the task of negotiation. Before buying anything while travelling, one question must always strike in your mind: how much does it really cost in real? To crack this question, you can just invest a little time in window shopping in a few shops to get an idea of the cost and its features. By doing this you will be knowledgeable about the market rate and how much to quote from your end.
- Hide your emotion- Often we fail to neutralise our facial expressions and emotions when we find what we want. Showing your emotions of likeliness is the worst thing you could do while purchasing because as soon as you convey how much you like the product, you lose the power of negotiation because you most likely will buy even at a given high price. Hence, it is really very important to keep your expressions guessing for the vendor.
- Quote less than what you think the price must be- Quoting is a very critical part of the negotiation games as once it is quoted there is no return. In this case, there are possibilities that you must have underquoted too much which you can repair by raising gradually until you find the sweet spot where the seller agrees to the quote.
- The walk away trick- While you are going upward with the price to bear the sweet spot of negotiation you can always adapt the walk away trick in which the seller will definitely call you back if that is reasonable to him. If not then you know that he wouldn’t sell at that price because he won’t make any profit from the deal.
- Celebrate the win-win situation- It is always very important that the game of negotiation ends with win-win circumstances. You should be happy because you were able to reduce the price to the best of your abilities and skills and the vendor should be happy as he perceived a profitable deal.
All the above-mentioned tips are listed just to educate you and not to scare you. India is a beautiful country with enormous history and culture. People in India are really welcoming with some great smiles on their faces and values rooted deep, as we believe in manifesting our tourism slogan “Atithi Devo Bhava” which translates as “the guest is God”.
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