Negotiating Tip #10:
The Squeaky Wheel
How to use the squeaky wheel strategy
The reason that the squeaky wheel gets the grease is because the wheel used to be quiet and now it’s not. A constantly squeaky wheel is easily ignored. When negotiating, take a tip from sports coaches about when to lose your temper. To quote Stanford professor Robert Sutton, author of The A**hole Survival Guide, “If they’re always screaming, eventually their players will think, ‘Well it’s not me, it’s him, he is just an a**hole.’ But when a typically calm and collected coach loses it, everybody pays attention.”
Anger can be an effective negotiating tool if used seldom and only when merited. If the other side makes a misrepresentation (otherwise known as a lie), it is entirely appropriate to yell at them – so long as you quickly calm down and move the conversation to what they need to do to make the situation right. On the other hand, if you shout and scream because the other side’s price is much worse than you expected, you are the one who loses: you look like an a**hole who people do not want to deal with.