Incremental conversion

Disciplines > Negotiation > Negotiation tactics > Incremental conversion

Description | Example | Discussion | See also

Description

When you are seeking to convince a group of people, rather than trying to convert them all at once, pick them off one at a time.

Focus on the individual, finding their separate needs.

Listen to many different people, putting together the jigsaw of understanding to get the bigger picture of their organization.

If you are using team negotiation, match people up one-on-one with the task of wooing them over.

When you have converted individual people, then you can also use them as allies, getting them to subvert and convert others.

Example

A negotiation team 'shares out' the people on the other side and get.

A negotiator uses breaks to catch people in informal situations, build trust and nudge them towards conversion.

A sales person makes an ally of the technical expert in the company and feeds them with material to help them do internal selling.

Discussion

Incremental conversion uses a 'divide and conquer' approach and helps break down group effects in the other side, for example where they may cluster around a polar position even when individually they are more open to persuasion.

It also allows for individual one-on-one relationships to be built that develop trust and hence move overall towards agreement.