BEING INCREMENTAL Underpinning the use of standards, and indeed all of Getting More’s advice, is the notion of being incremental. Break up a negotiation into multiple steps. Most people who are less skilled at negotiation ask others to take too big a step at once. They ask other people to make a big jump from where they are to where you want them to go. For example, “My computer is broken, give me a new one.” Asking the other person to make this big a jump makes it easy for the other person to say no. Big steps seem more risky, too different from the current status.
