My mum is a pro when it comes to haggling. Wherever she shopped, I had no doubt that she got the best offer available. She can haggle a great offer with anyone for any reason. And because she took me with her to most of the markets, I learned a lot about haggling/negotiating as I grew. It could be buying meat from the local market woman or haggling for the repair of the kitchen faucet from the plumber or the repair of the furniture from the carpenter or even negotiating on a service with a friend, my mum always ended up getting the best offer and she ensured I witnessed all this.
Fast forward to the present, haggling is one of my expertise, and trust me when I say it’s not because I am being cheap. I simply understand that in life, for everything to go smoothly, we have to disagree to agree. Unfortunately, the art of haggling is something a lot of Nigerians are uncomfortable with at best, and often try to avoid entirely as they consider it a status "thing" to be able to meet the initial offer/price mentioned. Not me sha.
Where I’m concerned, the need to haggle no matter how fair the initial offer had been is innate. In fact my mind is so conditioned to “price market” that the minute someone mentions their offer, my brain is automatically conditioned to say “ahn ahn why is it that expensive now?” or “Can’t I get a better offer than this?”
I believe the problem (if you choose to see it that way) began when my mum sent me to help her get some tomatoes worth sixty naira from the nearby market with fifty naira. Despite being apprehensive that the market women were going to beat me blue black, I heeded my mother’s instructions and proceeded to the market. And to my shock, the market women eagerly sold three cans of tomatoes for fifty naira. That move encouraged me to begin haggling- whether when buying products or seeking some services.
To further put my haggling practice into perfection, sometime in the early 2000 when I was a teenager, I escaped being lynched in Oshodi when I attempted to price a very expensive material I wanted to use for my birthday from 4600 naira to 800 naira. (I’m not exaggerating). Armed with the notion I got from people that Igbo traders multiply the product’s real price by four, I confidently faced an Igbo store owner and slashed her final asking price to eight hundred naira. She must have concluded I wasn’t going to buy the material (I would actually have bought it if she had agreed to my offer of 800 naira) and she started shouting and calling other shop owners around her to come and witness what she is witnessing today o. God must have intervened on that day as I thought someone was going to bring out petrol and tyre the way they all turned to me and lambasted my actions.
Don’t blame me. I learned from the best.
I once visited a major market with my mum and I witnessed as she haggled the price of a very huge catfish such that the fish seller was left quite speechless and all she could say was “Mummy, e mu eja yen le. Boya ti e ba suun si waju, won ma ta fun yin ni iye yen”(Mummy, put that fish down. Maybe if you move forward a bit, other sellers may sell to you at that price)At this point, she even pointed to somewhere unclear and went back to her seat totally ignoring us from then. From that day, I ensured my mum and I do not visit the market together.
Recently, I even attempted to update my haggling tactics when I attempted to negotiate the cost of the total bill incurred during my daughter’s delivery. The extremely well-traveled doctor had a look of shock when I suggested how much we were willing to pay and like someone chastising an errant and dumb child, proceeded to explain why it was impossible to even remove one naira, especially in the kind of tush environment I had dared to try. I even saw the look of embarrassment hubby had when I proceeded to expose my ratchet haggling attitude in the posh doctor’s office.
But here’s a truth that many of us don’t always consider: every interaction we have with another person is a form of haggling. From negotiating with your lover on having them come and pick you from work if they want you to sleep over, choosing that dark Yoruba demon among the numerous inter-tribal suitors you have, negotiating that salary plus vacation wages with the prospective employer you are looking to join, to being able to successfully reduce the price of that new DVD from that Igbo trader, we are navigating a in a world of back and forth negotiation and the better you are at influencing, persuading and negotiating towards getting the best out of people, the better you will be for it. I recently witnessed a sweet tongued friend of mine negotiate with a new employer an annual salary that was quadruple of what she was earning in her previous place of work. And she succeeded just because she dared and didn’t just accept what she was offered.
If you simply accept whatever people offer you without questioning, you will always have no choice than to take what’s given to you and hope that it matches what you want. Most times, it usually doesn’t.
Your boss wants you to work this weekend, how about negotiating to close early on Friday so you can finish up all your house chores on time to come early the next day? Your spouse wants pounded yam after work, how about negotiating to have him look after the kids for the rest of the night and also help in changing the front wheels of your car? Someone is asking for a certain sum of money as loan, how about negotiating a capital NO? Your son/daughter has tabled the bill for dic, tion and nary which they need to buy urgently before school resumes, how about negotiating to help them purchase the books since you are on your way to the market anyway? He wants to marry you before completion of your education and promises to finance the rest of your schooling after marriage, how about negotiating to have him make the funds available into your personal bank account before you accept the ring or even pay the tuition ahead of time to the school in question?
You see why you need to learn the art of haggling? And where better to start than the local markets particularly those men/women that sell meat, brokoto and fish- eja obokun especially.
