The Guilt close

Using guilt to close a negotiation can feel sleazy. Like all closing techniques there’s a time and place. Feeling guilty usually makes us pause and think about self improvement or change.

There’s a first simple version of this I use in construction all the time. Largely speaking all developers and builders get three prices on all trades, so largely speaking you should be winning 33% of your quotes. So the close is simply ‘we’ve done 5 quotes for you and haven’t won, I expect to win this deal otherwise we won’t be absorbing the cost of quoting anymore.

The second version comes from Forbes magazine; when you get a first offer that exceeds your expectation usually if you have someone over a barrel. The guilt question is ‘do I accept or do I press harder’.

The third version a little more complex comes from Harvard business school article about Uriel Haran who suggests “feeling guilty could lead us to make unnecessary concessions in negotiation.”