As part of my job, I have been in consistent negotiation process with some of the clients. Somehow I do not like it, because sometime it really can “wreck” friendship that I built over the years with some clients. I want to have more friends not enemies and life is just too short for the endless argument about pricing.

In the past few years, I am trying to give all my clients the best price or fair in the first proposal that I submitted to them. To me this serve some purposes very well

• This will cut down the negotiation process and we can focus our time, energy and money for something else that more useful for both party.
• If I lost the business, I will not regret it because I know that if I take the business, it will do more harm to me or company, unless if we are in the survival mode.
• If I do not give them best price, it means that I am not doing my job as their account handlers.

Similar analogy:  you may prefer to buy in the modern trade, you do not bargain, just take the product according to your need and pay. But there are downside to it:

• At the first, you will be seen as a person who are very hard to deal with, it will lead to a perception that you are snob or arrogant. Yap.. been there few times..
• When the clients have what so called “purchasing department” the best price strategy as above may give you headache because their KPI is to lower down the cost, and I tell you they are very-very tough.

It took quite a while to your client to understand that you are in a good will to give them the best price. In my case I need around 4-5 years for some giant local clients.

I usually politely ask them to compare it Apple to Apple to the competitors . When the pricing is no longer an issue and client believe that we give them a good price already, we can have fun to work with them and have a closer client servicing relationship.