Negotiation for account executives

Negotiation starts only once the prospect wants your product and is working the terms — price, scope, contract conditions.

Don't confuse the phases: an objection mid-evaluation needs LAARC; a discount demand at contract stage needs the toolkit below. ("Too expensive" from someone holding a signature-ready contract means "I want a discount", not "I doubt the value".)

Give-get trading

The iron rule: never concede without getting something in return. A free concession teaches the buyer that pushing produces free money, so they push again. Trade every give for a get:

• "We can move on price if you commit to a three-year term."
• "That discount works if we sign by the 28th and you agree to be a public case study."

Before any negotiation, write your list: gives (ranked cheapest-to-you first) and gets (longer term, upfront payment, case-study and reference rights, intros to other trusts). Trading isn't stinginess — it turns a price fight into deal-shaping, and buyers respect it.

Anchoring

Anchoring is the psychological effect where the first number on the table drags the whole negotiation towards it. So:

• state your defensible, full-value price first — note Voss disagrees, preferring to let the other side anchor; list-price B2B, where you know the range, is the classic case for anchoring first;
• open at the top of the justifiable range (you can move down, never up);
• and when the buyer anchors low ("we were thinking £40k"), don't counter from their number — reset to your frame: "Help me understand what's in scope at £40k, because what we specified sits at £110k, and here's why."

Discount hygiene — and why reps discount too early

Reps discount early for predictable reasons:

• they read silence as objection;
• they fear the loss more than they value the margin;
• quarter-end looms;
• discounting feels like doing something.

Buyers know this and simply wait. The rules:

1. Never discount unasked — volunteering 10% burns margin and signals your list price is fiction.
2. Never discount without a get — and case-study rights or a multi-year term often cost you nothing.
3. Make successive concessions smaller (10% → 4% → 1%) to signal the floor. Equal or growing concessions signal there's always more.
4. Trade scope before price — "we can hit that number by starting with two departments instead of five" protects pricing integrity and offers a choice, not a subsidy.
5. Ask what the discount unlocks — "If I get you 10%, is it signed this month?" A discount that changes nothing is a donation.

Procurement tactics — and counters

Professional buyers run trained plays:

• The nibble: after agreement, small extras get appended — "that includes the training days, yes?" Individually small; together, a discount by stealth. Counter: re-anchor to the written scope and treat every nibble as a fresh trade with a get attached.
• Good cop / bad cop: your friendly contact "fights for you" against a harsh procurement figure you rarely meet. Counter: ask to negotiate with the bad cop directly; arm your good cop with evidence (business case, comparison table), not concessions.
• The end-of-quarter squeeze: buyers slow deals into your final week to harvest panic discounts. Counter: never reveal quarter pressure; keep a full pipeline so no deal can hold you hostage; make any date-based discount a genuine expiring trade — and let it expire once, so future deadlines stay credible.

This isn't cynicism — procurement is doing its job. Knowing the plays keeps the game respectful and the margin intact.

Field note

A lot of public-sector buying doesn't look like a negotiation table at all. On a framework call-off or a formal tender, your "negotiation" happens in writing, through a portal, sometimes under fairness rules that forbid exactly the conversation the textbooks would have you steer. The craft moves upstream: shape the requirement, prove the value and build the relationships before the portal opens — because once it does, the number you type is the number you live with.

Negotiate price, scope and terms

Weak negotiators see one dial; strong ones see three:

• Price: the headline number.
• Scope: what's included — sites, users, modules, support tier, training, phasing. Most "price" problems are scope problems: shrink the initial scope, keep the unit price, grow later.
• Terms: everything else, much of it cheap for one side and precious to the other — payment timing (annual upfront helps your employer's cashflow), contract length (multi-year for a price lock), renewal uplift caps, case-study and reference rights.

The craft is trading across all three: "List price holds; we phase the rollout so year one fits your envelope; three-year term, capped uplift; you give us the case study."

BATNA and the walkaway

BATNA — Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (from the Harvard negotiation literature) — is what you'll do if this deal dies. An AE's real BATNA is the rest of the pipeline: with three live deals you negotiate calmly; with none, you radiate desperation. Prospecting discipline is negotiation strategy.

Set your walkaway — the terms below which you won't sign — before the negotiation, and mean it. The buyer has a BATNA too, often weak (another year of the £400k backlog); assess theirs as carefully as yours.

The Chris Voss essentials

Chris Voss (former FBI hostage negotiator, Never Split the Difference) supplies three tools:

• Tactical empathy: demonstrating you understand their position and feelings — not agreeing — before advancing your own. Includes labelling: naming the emotion aloud ("it sounds like you've been burned by a supplier before"), which measurably defuses it. This is LAARC's acknowledge step done with real skill.
• Calibrated questions: open "how/what" questions that hand the other side the problem to solve: "What would need to be true for this to get approved?" They make the buyer your collaborator, and the answers are pure discovery.
• "How am I supposed to do that?" — the flagship response to an aggressive demand. Procurement: "We need 30% off." You, warmly: "I want to find a way — help me out: how am I supposed to get 30% approved when this configuration is already at the floor?" It refuses without saying no and invites them to justify or shrink the demand. Genuine curiosity, not sarcasm.

Voice from the field

"The person across the table is never the problem. The unsolved issue is."
— Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference (2016)