English Listening Practice: Analyzing Proposals in Business Negotiations

Now that you've seen some examples of how people make proposals, let's listen to an example of this stage of a negotiation. What happens after someone makes a proposal? You'll recall from the last lesson that Trey McEvers wanted to rent a parking lot for his event. Andy Paulson represents the company that owns one of the lots. As you listen, think about these questions. Who mentions the price first? What is his proposal? Is his proposal accepted? And last, does this seem like a friendly negotiation? Trey McEvers, hi Trey, it's Andy Paulson. Andy right on time. Thanks so much for getting back to me and agreeing to discuss the parking lot rental. I'm glad we could find a time to discuss this. I'm sorry we need to do this by phone, but I'm headed out of town today. Why don't we start by your telling me a little bit what you need? You mentioned a dependent in your email. Let's see if we can work something out.

Right, as I said in the email, we're a small tech company and we're having an event on the evening of March 16th nearby your lot at Misha's Gallery. Oh, what a great menu. We think so too. So we would like to have a lot from about 5 pm until midnight. The event starts at 7.30. We're expecting about 200 guests, but of course not that many cars. We would need someone there as an attendant and people will probably be coming at different times. That lot holds 52 cars. It sounds like you're going to need that whole space. Here's the thing, Trey, we can't just close it at 5 pm. We would need to close it for the entire afternoon, but we'd still need someone there to make sure your team gets in, bothers don't. Sure that makes sense. And I'm wondering, did you need the attendant to park the cars or just control who comes in? The reason I ask is, I've got a couple of boys who park cars downtown for us. If they park the cars, we can get more cars in there. But we need two people if we do that.

Well, that's something I hadn't planned for. Okay, so now we're talking about running a lot from noon to midnight and hiring two attendants for 12 hours. I don't know if that's going to be within our budget. How much would that be? I know you want at least one attendant, but two would really make everything smooth. Let me propose this. We could offer the parking lot for 12 hours with two attendants for $1,200. Those boys are really professional. They will do an amazing job for you. How does that sound? It's still a little more than we plan to spend. Ideally, we'd like to do this for 800 bucks.

Trey, I'm not sure we can go that low. But I'd like to find a way to make this work. Let me think. How about this, Andy? I like the idea of having both your guys there. But I'm wondering if they both need to be there all day. What if one of my guys was there for the afternoon and your people come on later at six? If we did that, would you be willing to come down to $1,000? I like the way you think. That's a great solution. I think we have a deal.