competitive-negotiation

Read [runtime](../../content/RUNTIME.md) and [advisory rules](../../content/policies/advisory.md) before applying this skill. Other Foreman layers and the catalog are in `../../content/`, relative to this SKILL.md. # Competitive Negotiation The vice president of sales at a technology company ran an experiment. His team had been discounting reflexively -- shaving margins to close deals, training customers to expect that the quoted price was fiction. He instructed every sales professional to add 10 percent to their next proposal. The team protested: the market was saturated, the product was ageing, proposals went through competitive RFP processes. Four months later, the results arrived. Profitability increased 3 percent. Sales volume did not decrease at all. No new product. No new marketing. No market shift. The only variable that changed was the number on the opening offer. The most important moment in any competitive negotiation is the moment of asking -- and most people retreat at precisely that point, bargaining themselves down before the other party has said a word. --- ## The Framework ### The Nature of Competitive Negotiation Competitive negotiation is the process by which parties determine who gets how much of a defined pool of value. It answers a single question: how will this fixed pie be divided? Unlike cooperative negotiation -- which seeks to expand the pie (see [Win-Win Negotiation](../../content/skills/frameworks/win-win-negotiation.md) for the principled ...