To continue my story from part 2, Jeff and I had decided to look into getting our first bouncer. My chosen career (IT) means I’m on a computer all day that requires access to internet, so during breaks I would always be searching for bouncers, making notes on how much each company charged, how much delivery to our city was etc. After finding a handful of decent looking companies Jeff and I decided to look at our competitors to see what they had in their inventory because the amount of customization you could do to your bouncers was literally endless. We needed to focus on something that was popular, not too large (so it could fit in most backyards and community centers) and not too expensive to rent so it would appeal to most people. We finally decided on getting a square shaped bouncer as it fit all of our criteria. This turned out to be the correct choice as our square (aka tropical) bouncer became our most popular bouncer in our inventory. It’s so rare that I get something right the first time; I actually welcome mistakes since I’ve come to accept that they’re just a tool you can use to figure out the best way to do something, but in this case our due diligence and research proved correct and I was pleasantly surprised with the results.

Now that we had decided on the shape, it was time to get the best deal. A few months ago I had finished listening to the audio book “Secrets of Power Negotiating” by Roger Dawson. If you are interested in learning how to negotiate, I would highly recommend this book. It helped me realize that all of our lives we are negotiating (we’re always either buying something or selling something) and if we learn to recognize a situation where someone is willing to negotiate you can end up saving yourself a lot of money. I can personally say I’ve saved over $6000 after listening to that book, for example negotiating down the price of my home and reducing costs for services. Also, it’s helped me recognize when someone was trying a negotiating trick or gambit as Mr. Dawson describes it and helped me make the counter to the gambit. So, one of the lessons I learnt from Secrets of Power Negotiating was that in order to get the deal I want at the best price, first thing I needed to do was research all the features I wanted in the bouncer. I started taking notes of what we wanted in the bouncer (where the air pipe was going to be located, the mesh location, where the zipper would go, the design pattern and how the entry into the bouncer would look). Once I knew what features we wanted, the next step was finding the right price. I looked at all comparable bouncers and made note of the prices they were charging. Once I had my price, I started feeling out the companies to see which one was willing to negotiate. Alot of them didn’t get back to me or were firm on their pricing and didn't want to budge. That didn’t discourage me though since I knew there was plenty of competition and I could always approach another company. Now, keep in mind I am briefly summarizing my experience, finding a company willing to actually start negotiating with me took about a week. One of the most important rules from Roger Dawson is: “never be afraid to walk away from a deal”. If it’s not worth it, just say no thanks and move on. A deal is not worth it if you don’t benefit in some way or you end up feeling ripped off which breeds negativity (and there’s already enough of that in the world without us contributing to it!). Eventually I did find someone who said she would be willing to make a deal. The negotiating didn’t go as smooth as I wanted as we negotiated all the details of the bouncer first and left the price for the end. Another rule from Roger Dawson is never leave the price till the end because now you’ll be in a win-lose deal where someone needs to win and someone needs to lose. Your goal should always be win-win so both sides leave the negotiations feeling good and you have a higher chance of doing business with the person in the future. One of my goals coming out of the negotiation was to build a relationship with a supplier so we’d have a source of new products whenever we needed. I was able to get the supplier to knock off 19% off the price she initially listed the bouncer for. My goal was to get off 30% but really as this was my first real experience in a big negotiation getting anything off made me happy. So I talked it over with Jeff, showed him the data that the cost was actually quite a bit lower than anywhere else we could’ve got it from and he agreed. Negotiations didn’t quite end at the point after we agreed to their price. Our supplier had previously agreed on a specific graphic for the front of our bouncer. When they showed us the graphic they had on hand it was easy to see it was different from what we originally agreed upon. I decided to use another of Roger Dawson’s negotiating tips: the trade-off. This is where when one side asks for something you have to ask for something back immediately in order to encourage them to stop making changes to the contract. In this case, I made it sound like I couldn’t accept the changed graphic and I was thinking of cancelling the order. The supplier went into a bit of a panic because she was about to lose her commission on the order so I offered her a way out: I said I could convince my partner to go ahead with the order, but she had to promise us to give us a better deal than 19% for the next order. This point is important to mention as it aided us the second time we ordered bouncers from this company. Our supplier promised that she will get us better than 19% off for the next order, and we had a deal! Two months had passed at this point. Our bouncer was paid for and we had to wait another three weeks before we received it. So it would be three months later that our first bouncer arrived and we had to figure out what to do next.

And this is a good spot to end this post. As before, I’ll continue the story in my next post. Have a great week folks!

P.S. If you haven’t noticed, the comment system should be in place now! If you don’t want to sign in to leave a comment, you can click the name field at the bottom and choose the checkbox “l’d rather post as a guest”. I know, it’s not intuitive! Sorry!