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Okay, I'll play!
This did work (I'll comment on why I think it worked at the end).
One of our campus purchasing directors signed a 3-year contract with a large software company well known for its large profits and its stubborn refusal to negotiate.
The campus purchasing director either didn't read, or mis-read, what they were signing, because as soon as I took a look at it, I realized the vendor was right. The contract the campus had signed clearly said that they could cancel at any time, but would still owe the entire amount of the 3-year contract ($3 million, payable in 3 annual installments of $1m). The campus (incorrectly) thought that since it said they could cancel at any time, they wouldn't need to pay any more after they'd given notice that they wanted to cancel - which they did within 6 months of signing it. But that's not what the contract said. (Ugh.)
So not much leverage to go on here... but my job was to try to help the campus. So I made a calculated decision to take an emotional approach. I got on the phone with our account exec and his boss, who were being all smug because they knew they were right about this one.
I launched into a full on emotional tirade ("You should be ashamed of yourselves! We spend $millions with your company every year. Our campusus are hurting. They're laying off faculty, canceling classes and cutting out entire departments. Students who've been hoping to go to college since elementary school, who've been working at back-breaking jobs and saving their pennies for years are not going to be able to graduate. They're going to leave college with their dreams shattered and with student loans to repay and go back to their hometowns to spend the rest of their lives working at minimum-wage jobs just because you managed to pull a fast one on an overworked, over-stressed purchasing director. How can you live with yourself?" Etc. etc.)
The final result was that the campus paid 1 installment of $1m and did not have to pay the other 2.
Okay, I believe that in order for this to work, it needs to be done well. I had excellent training. In my family that I grew up in, the way people argued with each other was by emotionally clobbering one another & seeing who was left "not" in an emotionally devastated heap at the end. (Ugh) I totally hated that way of resolving disputes - but I did get pretty good at it (a theatrical flare helps).
So that's my story. |
