Iberia’s Chief Financial Officer, Enrique Dupuy de Lome may be soft-spoken but his negotiation strategy is aggressive. He maintained the upper hand in negotiations with Leah and Bright, mainly using the ‘Anchoring’ sales negotiation technique. In this technique, Dupuy as the buyer shares his target buying price to anchor the bargaining range on the low side.
Dupuy is also known by Airbus’ Leah and Boeing’s Bright as setting tough price terms and requiring hard sales guarantees that lower Iberia’s buying risk. Dupoy does not relent or compromise on his target and both competitors were advised that the winning bid would be the one that hit his target.
At all times during the negotiations, Dupuy’s tactics were geared towards maintaining an advantage. He was very explicit in his intentions as a tactic to intimidate both competitors; suggesting to both Airbus and Boeing that he might eventually replace the A340s with Boeings at a cost to Airbus. Similarly he made it public that because of the price guarantees he negotiated with Airbus, Airbus did not have the upper hand in the current negotiations which resulted in Iberia having “a powerful bargaining tool on future prices.” Dupoy also responded to both Leah and Brights’ revised offers with a subtle threat that the competitor was leading in the negotiations- using first name bases to hint that he was leaning towards the competitor’s offer and threatened to scrap the negotiations and purchase used aircraft from Singapore Airlines at bargain prices.
Dupoy was very accommodating of each competitor, facilitating meetings and calls that were often inconvenient in order to keep both feeling that they were still ‘in the game’ and should continue to negotiate a better deal.
