Everything is Negotiable
I love (and live) this one, and have ever since I was a child. My father took unique pleasure in every opportunity to prove to me that everything in life is negotiable. He is an expert salesman and marketer who would show me, half for amusement and half for educational purposes, that you could outsell any seller. The hardest part is initiating a negotiation where there is no appearance of one. The best tool of negotiation is recognizing that everyone wants to feel as if they have achieved something of equivalent value in the transaction. Often, your greatest wellspring of value is intangible, like goodwill, loyalty, reputation or catering to the very ephemeral trappings of ambition I detailed in an earlier post. When you approach everything as if it were negotiable, you see each exchange as an opportunity to do something a little better, a little faster, a little more affordable, and hopefully, a little more valuable for everyone involved.
