Another extremely successful tactic I stumbled upon by accident: electing a 3rd party decision maker that the other negotiator can't communicate with. Without the communication channel, the other negotiator is forced to "sweeten the deal" instead of using conversational skills.
I received a job offer while my wife was traveling. The number was right for me and the job/company was right. But I told the hiring manager that I needed to talk it through with my wife first and that I'd need a few days (no context about why I needed the time or which direction I expected it to go).
She got home 3 days later. We sat down, talked it through for 10 minutes, and we were ready to accept.
In the time between the initial offer and accepting the offer, I received 3 updated offers with increasing compensation. The final offer I accepted was $75k higher than the initial offer.
After experiencing that, I've noticed companies use this tactic frequently. When you call into a help center, often times the phone operator "will need to talk to their manager" who is authorized to make the actual decision. You aren't allowed to talk to the manager - all communication goes through the intermediary. I suspect they are aware that this is an effective negotiating tactic.
I agree with you about the benefits of disallowing your counter-party from communicating directly with the final decision maker (for the purposes of a negotiation), but I don't think that's what call centers are doing. Front-line agents screen a lot of calls by people who have easy-to-resolve issues, or are just angry..
Hm, that probably won't work against a competent negotiator, but it makes sense! They invent some nightmare scenario where they lose you, and they end up bidding against their nightmare, rather than you.
I have used this to buy cars with great success (including getting well below MSRP during the pandemic). I even have a cheap aliexpress wedding ring I wear so I can more convincingly talk about "my wife" as the decision maker in the negotiations.
I doubt this would work in any other context because the sales / negotiations are less in-person (e.g. buying a house, where you only really go through your realtor I think; idk still haven't bought yet...).
I received a job offer while my wife was traveling. The number was right for me and the job/company was right. But I told the hiring manager that I needed to talk it through with my wife first and that I'd need a few days (no context about why I needed the time or which direction I expected it to go).
She got home 3 days later. We sat down, talked it through for 10 minutes, and we were ready to accept.
In the time between the initial offer and accepting the offer, I received 3 updated offers with increasing compensation. The final offer I accepted was $75k higher than the initial offer.
After experiencing that, I've noticed companies use this tactic frequently. When you call into a help center, often times the phone operator "will need to talk to their manager" who is authorized to make the actual decision. You aren't allowed to talk to the manager - all communication goes through the intermediary. I suspect they are aware that this is an effective negotiating tactic.