Overwhelm

Disciplines > Negotiation > Negotiation tactics > Overwhelm

Description | Example | Discussion | See also

Description

Give the other side so much information that they become overwhelmed and unable to cope.

When they ask for details about your company, give them sheafs of history, financial analyses, market information.

When they ask you for information verbally, go on at great length, talking about all the exceptions and variations in the area they are asking about.

Snow them under with a blizzard of information. Hide the needle that they are seeking in a haystack of irrelevant data.

You can also overwhelm them with requests. Keep asking for information. Probe for more and more answers.

Example

You wanted to see our customer results for the SB04 product line. I've had my secretary send you all the customer results we have. I'm sure it's in there somewhere.

School numbers? Yes, well there's 2000 special educational units, 24 of those with under-fives, six within this in this very city...then there's the educational units in hospitals, of course, I don't know if you want to include these but they are sometimes important...

How many are you looking for? What type? What variant? Which year?

We want to see all your financial records for the past ten years, including divisional results and internal analyses.

Discussion

When you snow another person you cannot be accused of being unhelpful or failing to comply with their requests.

This is also an opportunity to show them how busy you are, how much work you do and how really complex and difficult it really is.