How to haggle and win

The trick: ask for more money than you deserve 

- Vivek Kaul 

As a self- employed writer, I have to regularly haggle with people I write for on the money front. I have to chase payments which are due but have not been made. I have to get those editors to talk about money who want me to write but are not ready to talk about money. And then I have to talk to publications I have been writing for a while if an increase in payment is due.

Talking about money doesn't come naturally to us Indians. We seem to believe that the other guy is out there to rip us and that attitude seeps into our conversations on money. Having said that, the one thing that I have realised is that it always makes sense to for more money than what one thinks one deserves.

This is primarily because in most cases, the individual one is dealing with tries to haggle and bring down the price. He also needs to have the feel of having got a good deal at the end of the day. Given this, it is important to quote a higher price than what one expects to make. (If that makes you feel that this is like buying vegetables in the market, it is more or less like that).

Of course, this is not true just about freelance writers trying to make a living. It applies to others as well. As Robert Cialdini writes in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, "Labour negotiators, for instance, often use the tactic of beginning with extreme demands that they do not actually expect to win but from which they can retreat in a series of seeming concessions designed to draw real concessions from the opposing side."