
There was a football game the other day. The biggest one of the year.
I’m not psychic, but before it even started, I knew one thing for sure: these teams would do their best to march down the field and score.
And in doing so, they would try to move down that field in increments.
Sure, there would be some big plays where they try to get a lot of yards at once. And there would be smaller plays where they would get just a couple.
And, let’s be honest, there would be some plays where they didn’t get any, or maybe even lost a couple.
But ultimately, they would keep moving down the field.
In increments. Not all at once.
In fact, the game of football is so focused on increments that there were even increments painted on the sidelines, to denominate the progress they have to make in order to score and win.
Negotiating a real estate deal thoughtfully and relationally is very similar.
We keep moving in increments toward the end zone until we get there.
Then we kick off and we try to get the ball back and do it again, all the way until the game is over.
For us, the end of the fourth quarter is the closing.
But most real estate investors don’t negotiate this way. They negotiate hard up to the point where they put the property in contract, and then they stop negotiating after that.
And because they are pushing so hard at the start, sometimes they never even get that property in contract.
They never realize that they can get some more yards later in the game, and those yards might actually come easier than trying to get yards the beginning of the game.
This results ultimately in them getting LESS of what they want.
They need to implement the Art of Incremental Negotiation.