How to play Russian Roulette and win

Here is another fabulous vignette of a somewhat alternative negotiating technique and probably the finest I have seen in my lifetime. Let me set the scene for you.

My vendor client, Mr. Instone Bloomfield, was a wealthy banker with a swanky office in Berkeley Square and had instructed Glentree to sell his expensive, trophy mansion, in St John’s Wood, namely Mermaid House, for a price which in today’s money would be £75million.

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The story of OnTheMarket.com

On The MarketAbout seven years ago a sales representative from one of the two major portals came to me and asked for a 50% increase in our yearly tariff.

I was so horrified at the audacity of this proposal, that I thought I had misheard him. “Did you say 15%”? Even this ‘stuck in my craw’ as it was the equivalent of seven years worth of inflation in one hit. “No” he retorted, “I said 50%”, my worst fears were confirmed. He then tried to diffuse my mounting anger, by sheepishly asking me “not to shoot the messenger”. He explained that it was a diktat from the “head honcho” and there was nothing he could do about it.

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