One of the most important skills you can possess as an RV Park buyer is the art of negotiation. While most buyers understand the concept of starting low and triangulating the final price from the back-and-forth of price haggling but one element that often goes overlooked is the “Flinch”. In this RV Park Mastery podcast, we’re going to review what the “Flinch” is and why it’s imperative that you adopt it immediately when negotiating on RV Parks.
Episode 110: The Importance of The "Flinch" Transcript
So you're negotiating with an RV Park owner. You throw out a low price, they counter with another price. You up your price a little, they counter once again, is that what negotiation is all about? No. You're missing one important feature, and that's called the flinch. This is Frank Rolfe with the RV Park Mastery Podcast. We're gonna talk about the flinch. It's a very, very important part of the negotiation process, and if you don't utilize it fully, it's going to hurt you. So Webster's dictionary defines flinch as to make a quick nervous movement as an instinctive reaction to fear, pain, or surprise. And that's pretty descriptive of what the flinch is in negotiation. So what happens is, when someone throws out the price as the counter to your price or even the initial price, you need to instinctively demonstrate to them the great pain and horror you have at their price to make them feel as though their price is too high. Now, if you ever watch the shows Pawn Stars or American Pickers, you'll see the flinch commonly in use. The farmer will say to the guys from American Pickers, "Oh, I need $400 for that old Coca-Cola sign," to which they will always respond, "Whoa, boy, that is really high. That's, that's, that's, I don't think that's gonna work." And they do that because that makes the seller realize, given that verbal and often that visual clue from their body language, that, "uh-oh, I'm pushing the envelope here. I better expect a counter."
Now, why is the flinch so important? Well, it's because we all know that the whole point of negotiation is, it's kind of an art form that the seller wants to believe they got the best bargain they could get, and they're really only happy when you show telltale signs of pain and being uncomfortable with the price. That's the trigger to them to let them know that they have done a good job. They then can then go back and tell their spouse or their friends, "Oh yeah, you won't believe how I beat up that RV Park buyer. I threw out this price, I thought the guy was gonna have a heart attack." So if you don't give him the flinch, then you're not going to get to be where you want to be in the seller's head. And the seller may be thinking they're not doing a good enough job, and as a result, the price may have to go then higher. I once was talking to a seller about a 24 space park, and he tells me, "Well, I've come up with a price, but I can't tell you over the phone. I have to meet you in person," which is better from a negotiation perspective, anyway. So he invited me to go over to his house, so at the allotted day and time, I went over to his house, little tiny ranch house north of Fort Worth, and went in there and the guy gives me this big intro.
He says, "Well, I've been really thinking about the property, and I know it's in poor condition. But you have to remember that when I built it, it cost all this money to build it, and the locations are rare, the permits are hard to get, and it has a smattering of residual residents," and so on and so forth. And I always thought, "Oh no, this guy's gonna have a huge price on this thing." So after he gives me all this big opening, he says, "So after really thinking about it, I've decided I've gotta get at least eight." And I thought he was gonna say $800,000, but instead he said, "I've gotta get at least $80,000." Now what do I do? I know the guy has horribly underpriced this thing. He's done it himself. I had nothing to do with it, but what do I do? Well, I knew that if I said, "Oh, oh, I'll take it for sure, then." He would suddenly perhaps say, "Wait, let me think about this again. That price that didn't include the land, that price didn't include the roads." So instead, I had to use the flinch.
So I said, "Whoa, whew, that is high. I'm gonna have to put a lot of capital in to fix it up. Oh boy, I don't know about that price. You sure you can't go any lower than that?" And he said, "Oh, no, I'm sorry. That's just, that's as low as I can humanly go, otherwise I'll have to keep it." And I just kept hamming up the flinch saying, "Boy, it's gonna be really hard to make those numbers tie, but oh, if that's, if that's what it takes, then I guess, I guess I'll have to do it. But boy, you really beat me up."
And he was very happy with that. And I'm sure he went to his grave thinking he had really done a great negotiation on that property, only because I gave him those visual clues of pain and suffering and surprise from his price. So regardless of what the seller ever tells you the price must be, you must never not use the flinch. And if the flinch is so important, and I promise you that it is, then how do you get comfortable with it? Because it seems so fake and phony. We just don't negotiate much in America. So as a result, it's gonna feel real weird when someone throws a price out to you to go, "Oh, wow, that's a lot." Because we don't do that. In America we don't negotiate in our everyday lives. It's not like being in some countries where everything is negotiable. In some foreign countries, they don't even put prices on stuff. Everything is based on a barter economy, whether you're buying groceries or rugs from the rug merchant. In everything that you do, you negotiate. But in America, everything seems to be set that we don't negotiate. We only negotiate on these big things like an RV park or your personal residence or cars, but day-to-day things, we don't. And as a result, we all lose touch with the art of negotiation and the whole concept of the flinch. So how can you get a handle on that? Well, I urge you to go to those situations where in smaller dollar terms, negotiation is prevalent.
Farmers' markets, estate sales, antique stores, garage sales, things where you can practice without spending a lot of money. You can go to an estate sale where they've got a big old stack of books and it says, the hardbound books are $5 and the paper bounds are $2. And you may pick up a hard pound book because it interests you and say, "I know it says 5 bucks, but gosh, that seems like a lot. Would you take 3?" And then they say, "Well, how about 4?" Then you flinch. You go, "Ooh, boy, that seems like a lot. I can get this at a lot of places cheaper than that. How about three and a quarter?" And I know you'll feel uncomfortable with that. You'll think, "Well, my time is worth more than that." Sure it is. But that's not the point here. The point here is getting real life training on the whole concept of the flinch. And what you're gonna find is once you've learned it, kinda like riding a bicycle, not only do you never forget it, but it also comes in handy in all kinds of things that go on in life. Once you've developed the flinch and developed the basics of negotiation, suddenly things that you didn't know were negotiable suddenly become negotiable. You'd be shocked at all the things out there that you take for granted that only can be purchased at a fixed firm price, which actually are negotiable.
I don't care if you're buying jewelry at Neiman Marcus, you'll be shocked at how many things if you only ask, if you only use the flinch, if you only negotiate, you can accomplish and get a lot of money saved off of that. The bottom line to it all is if you wanna be a good negotiator on RV parks, you're gonna have to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. You're gonna have to adopt kind of that fake Hollywood demeanor known as the flinch. It's essential because it makes the seller feel happy, and it gives them visual and verbal clues as to know when the negotiation can go no farther. This is Frank Rolfe, the RV Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.