Starting from Scrap by Stephen Greer

Author:Stephen Greer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58080-160-7
Publisher: Burford Books

In Charlotte I hit pay dirt pretty quickly. I happened into a portly gentleman named Mel Edelman. He was a leading stainless steel guy in the Carolinas and at one point had been a major player in the United States until he was allegedly defrauded and more or less wiped out. Mel was crawling back up the mountain when I encountered him.

As I had done in Asia, I tested the waters through trading and negotiated a deal to buy about twenty-five container loads from Mel during my first visit. He explained during the negotiation in a smooth southern drawl, “I’m happy to do business with y’all but need you to understand that you’ll have to be competitive on price, and in the current market I need six hundred bucks a tuunn.”

He’d just made the biggest mistake in trading. At all costs, you want the other guy to shout his price first. I paused, giving a few moments for consideration, took out a calculator, pretended to do some math with a furrowed brow, and finally responded with a touch of twang and a smile, “Mel, I think you know six hundred bucks is on the high side. We need to help each other out here. I wanna get some business started, so don’t try to make a killin’ on our first deal.” I then paused for effect and finished, “The very best I kin do is pay ya $580. Now don’t squeeze me anymore. This is long-term business we’re talkin’ about. Let’s not haggle.”

Secretly, I was doing an Irish jig in my brain, as the “high price” of $600 that Mel demanded was already $50 lower than my current sales price. Mel acquiesced; we were in business.

By negotiating down to $580, I was now making $70 a ton as a broker, a cool thirty-five grand. Damn, I should have asked for more.

It’s important to understand the mentality of a trader and the necessity of haggling. Had I simply accepted his initial offer, he would have been embarrassed for proposing too low a price. By haggling, I made more money, of course, but of equal long-term importance I had given him face by making him feel that he’d achieved a good price. Buyer’s or seller’s remorse is a powerful emotion. Give in too quickly and they’ll feel bad about it every time and will try to get you back on the next deal. I know I do when it happens to me. This was going to be a barnburner. If I could make seventy bucks a ton as a broker, and Mel was making another hundred or more in order to cover overhead and make a sensible profit, Hartwell was going to clean up down in Dixie.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.