In our sales negotiations, we often focus primarily on monetary concerns: how to get the best price for a new car, how much to charge a new client for your services, and so on. By contrast, we may have quite different concerns—and negotiate much differently—when we have a strong emotional attachment to the item we are selling.
As a case in point, consider Clara Aich, a retired commercial photographer who was born in Hungary. Upon moving to New York in the 1970s to launch her career, Aich went looking for studio space in Manhattan, as described in a New York Times feature. Manufacturers had been exiting the city in droves, and cavernous industrial spaces were selling for cheap.
Touring an abandoned foundry on East 25th Street, Aich was instantly smitten. The dramatic, lofted 1848 building was filled with architectural molds and carvings left behind by its former owners, the firm Rochette & Parzini, which built statues and friezes for many of New York’s landmark buildings. “The whole place was like a dream world,” Aich said in a documentary filmed by Joshua Charow.
Aich’s friends warned that the building would be a money pit: There was no heat, and snow fell from the double-high collapsed ceiling. Yet she felt compelled to buy the space and live there, drawn to its history and beauty. She cobbled together $15,000 for the down payment on the building and another $10,000 for its architectural artifacts, which she firmly believed needed to stay.
Aich set up her studio, slowly made repairs, and invited neighbors and artists in for coffee. Over the years, she turned her home into a salon—known both as Palazzo Parzini and as Casa Clara—where she hosted concerts, operas, and plays. Visitors fell in love with the space, lingering long after an event had ended, she said.
But, burdened by a $2 million mortgage and growing older, Aich recently put the building up for sale, with a list price of $7.9 million. She fears developers will knock it down and build a much taller building. But Jonathan Hettinger, representing the sale for Sotheby’s, told the Times he was optimistic a creative professional who would want to preserve the space’s history and aesthetics would emerge.
“That would be the dream,” Aich told Charow. She longed for a buyer who would ensure the building would be “respected and loved . . . a supporter of arts, who would do some interesting projects.” She concluded, “So, let’s believe that good things will happen. That the right person will come who will just cherish and love it.”
Emotions and Sales Negotiations
Aich’s attachment to her stunning home raises an interesting question: When we have a strong emotional connection to something we’re selling, do we behave differently in sales negotiations than when selling something we care about less? If so, how?
Cornell University Professor Alice J. Lee and Columbia Business School professor Daniel R. Ames examined this question in recent research on emotion in negotiation. The researchers predicted and found that emotional attachment to a possession leads sellers to scrutinize potential buyers more closely. Specifically, looking beyond buyers’ mere ability to offer a good price, these sellers consider the buyers’ “caretaking attributes”—their perceived likelihood of maintaining the commodity as it is, rather than altering or even destroying it.
In one study, the researchers surveyed people who had recently made sales on online marketplaces, such as Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, for items ranging from musical instruments to clothing. The more attached the sellers were to their possession, the greater the effort they made to vet buyers. This included how likely they thought a buyer would be to take good care of the item—assessing, for example, whether a buyer praised the item, criticized it, or described how they would use it.
In two other studies, recent home sellers and real estate agents alike reported that the more emotionally attached sellers were to their homes, the more elaborate their search for the “right” buyer was. Emotionally attached sellers preferred buyers who they perceived would be trustworthy caretakers, even when controlling for financial considerations. Finally, in a lab experiment, the researchers found that sellers preferred buyers who “expressed caretaking intentions, even when that buyer made a comparatively unattractive financial offer.”
Accounting for Emotion
This research on how emotions affect negotiations has implications for both sides in sales negotiations. For sellers, this means looking beyond financial considerations to consider the emotional weight you give to your possession. How much money are you willing to sacrifice, if any, to find a buyer you trust to preserve your beloved item? And how might you accurately assess a buyer’s trustworthiness? Try to quantify these factors so that you don’t end up sacrificing too much, either financially or emotionally.
As for buyers, those who intend to preserve a desired purchase as the seller intended would be wise to communicate this to increase their odds of a sale. In competitive home sales, for example, buyers are sometimes advised to write a note to the seller describing why they love the house and how they would care for it. Conversely, buyers who do not have caretaking intentions should consider avoiding negotiations with buyers who want it to be preserved—both for ethical reasons and to avoid a potentially difficult business negotiation.
Question: What have your experiences with emotional sellers been like in sales negotiations?
