The Art of negotiating.....

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I don't know about experience and time is the best teacher. If you have been doing it wrong and do it over and over , you won't get different results. I'm an example of that .If you are experienced or new , set pride aside for a little bit and admit that you can learn something newfrom some of the great people on here you will benefit from it.
i did and am grateful for this forum and it' members

 

Definitely a skill set I would like to learn... Without it taking trial and error!

 

you are so right that negotiating and tne ability to do it well is important to a drivers success... in mh short 6 months I have had to negotiate for a better truck, negotiate with my feet manager multiple times, from changing an appointment time to getting paid for something like extra mo ey above the usual stop and detention pay when I was held up at a shippers for a long time, to getting paid to take my truck in on my home time for a safety inspection... I have even negotiated get reimbursed for pahing for reserved parking when I was rolling into early am...

I have also had to negotiate with lumpars and with service people...

I was lucky that I had a background in sales and had some training and experience in negotiating.

Iggest mistake made.. not takkng the time to gather the info you need to negotiate.. too often drivers go in to battle or negotiate un armed and unprepared..

Example.. needed to negotiate with fleet manager to change my appointment time.. why, because I was given the loade late and if I ran 10 hours I would be looking for parking at 2am.. so I had all mh information.. what truck stops there were on my route and why I would have to park early at this particular truck stop.. he first hit me with I had hojrs and there are truck stops further down the road.. yes, there was a loves that is always over full.. a flhing j that is over full.. and the rest area that is always full.. he had nothing else.. so he rescheduled the appointmet

 

We've all heard the saying, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results."

Sometimes as people we are hard pressed to learn from our mistakes, our mistakes can be our best teachers, IF we learn to recognize them and learn to try new things or a different approach. It's kind of like hitting your thumb with a hammer, after so many times of doing it, you learn to get your thumb out of the way.

 

A couple of good reads to get you going would be Roger Dawson's Secrets of Power Negotiating. The second is Getting To Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury.

Whenever I hear talk of negotiating, I'm reminded of something I read once - You will NEVER make as much money as when you are negotiating successfully. If you are negotiating on a new truck or house; that last bit of negotiating is usually only over a couple thousand dollars and takes just minutes. A thousand dollars a minute isn't a bad wage.

 

its actually not rocket science, but the biggest failure is not knowing one true cost of operation, adding in driver pay and expected profit on top of that.

without knowing that , you can possibly know what to even negotiate for.

and you will surprised at how many that don't know that.

 

I am going to sound like Kevin Rutherford here (ew), but the first thing is knowing your actual costs. Figure out what you spend a month and divide that by loaded as well as empty miles to get a base figure of what a mile actually costs you. Use that as your foundation. From there, its a matter of deciding how much YOU are worth, and how much (or little) that you are willing to take.

As far as negotiating, it's really an art. Figure there is always someone out there willing to move the freight cheaper than you; you have to sell them on how you can do it BETTER to justify a higher price. You really have to be confident in yourself and your abilities, and exude that confidence without being arrogant. The bottom line is to remember if you can't get a living wage price, there is plenty of freight out there. If you plant a good enough seed, that client who shot you down may call you later when Mr. Low ball does something stupid. I have landed several shippers that way.