Right now, I have two messages in my voice mail, awaiting my instantaneous reply.

And they will be awaiting that reply for the better part of this morning.

Im sending them a message of my own, one that is powerful and highly potent. But my message has no words or tones, or specific content.

My message is SILENCE.

Silence is golden; the expression says, and it is on target, especially during certain negotiations.

If you want to express your power, your position, your options, doing it instantly and verbally may not be the best approach. Heres why:

(1) Youre going to seem too eager to get a deal done. Enthusiasm is great in lots of business situations, but negotiation isnt one of them. Once somebody knows youre hot to trot, hell exploit it.

(2) Silence promotes anxiety and uncertainty in your counterparts, and thats good for you. Theyll become more impulsive, more likely to overcompensate you, just to put the deal behind them.

(3) Silence says you have other options, you dont NEED this deal, or else. Always, a person with options is more attractive and powerful to a suitor.

(4) Silence will determine just how serious they are. Will they communicate again, and how long will it take? If they can wait, theyre smart, and theyll be turning the tables on you. No problem, you can snap the drought by contacting them, without losing clout.

(5) If you lose the deal, because you waited and they had viable number twos and threes waiting in the wings, you were not in a very strong position with them, anyway. You and your offer came across as generic, as interchangeable commodities, and this is a positioning problem that should be corrected.

Remember, though, there is a difference between silence and rudeness.

If you promised to follow-up at a specific time, good manners require you to do it, so its better to just say, Ill get back to you.