Leverage Is a Fact, Not a Tone

People confuse leverage with forcefulness. They think the strong negotiator is the one who threatens, sets deadlines and talks about walking out. The strong position is usually the quiet one: you have an alternative, you know something, you have time, or you do not need the deal. Any of those changes the other side’s behaviour without a single hard word.

An alternative, shown when asked

In February 2022, while I was considering a residence in a new Bangkok development, the developer’s sales executive asked me directly what I was comparing it with. I had told him on a call that I was looking at a competing penthouse. He wanted the details.

I sent them: the competitor’s unit sizes, floors, prices per square metre and payment schedule, as their salesperson had sent them to me. No commentary, no threat. Just the alternative, in his inbox, in numbers he could compare line by line.

That is leverage. It did not need adjectives.

Not needing it

In September 2024 a pest-control company sent a new quote for a property, much higher than the one I had on file from five years earlier. My reply:

We can honor the previous monthly quote, nothing else. I don’t have any major or let alone even minor insect issues. If this is not possible - no harm, no foul - all good.

The vendor would not honour a five-year-old price, which was fair. But it came back with a smaller service at a fraction of the original quote. The leverage was the plain fact in the middle of my email: I did not have a problem that needed solving. When you do not need the thing, you can say so, and the other side has to find a version you will buy.

I used the same phrase with a sales-training firm in 2018, offering what we could afford “If that is acceptable, let’s roll. If not, no harm no foul.” That story is in Tuesday Mornings at 8:30.

Time

The calmest form of leverage is not being in a hurry. In 2010 a bank wanted me to sign a purchase agreement for a building quickly and began marketing it to other buyers. I would not sign until I knew whether the building could be leased, and I said so. I ended up walking away, and that is told in Diligence That Ends in No. The bank’s urgency was its problem. Making it mine would have been the mistake.

When tone took over

The counter-example is in my own emails. In 2018, negotiating for a parcel of land, the seller agreed my price but would not finance part of it. His broker offered to keep working on him. I had another opportunity, which was real leverage. What I sent instead was a single dismissive line telling him to enjoy his life.

The alternative was the leverage. The line added nothing to it, and it closed the conversation before anyone had tried to solve the seller’s actual concern. That episode is in When the Deal Gets Large.

What I count as leverage

• An alternative you could actually take, and are willing to show.
• Information the other side does not have, or does not know you have.
• Time: being able to wait longer than they can.
• Not needing it: being able to say no without cost.
• Structure: a term the other side values more than you do, to trade.

None of those requires a threat. If I find myself writing a threat, it is worth checking which of them I am short of.

Working out which of the five you actually hold, before anyone sits down, is the part I am usually called in for on a high-stakes negotiation.