For some reason people are scared to negotiate and they are doing their business an injustice. Everything you can think about is negotiable; whether it be real estate, supplies, inventory… I’ve saved such an incredible amount of money by negotiating, you probably wouldn’t believe me.
I don’t go to Walmart and try to negotiate a mirror, but if they have one of those open box specials, you can negotiate the price down. Although you can negotiate with major retailers, it’s not as easy and you can’t always do it, unless it’s stock they really need to get rid of. Of course there is nothing stopping you from trying.
The most effective places to negotiate are smaller to medium sized businesses. Believe it or not a lot of companies are expecting you to negotiate so they’ll quote you a higher price than they actually expect. If you say, “Is this the best price I can get?” Most likely they will say, “Yes.” That’s not a good negotiation tactic.
A better way to negotiate is just throwing a number out there after they’ve thrown out there number. For example you’re buying a bed at the furniture store, the salesperson says the bed is $1000. You tell him, “I’ll give you $700 for it, I saw another bed that looks similar and that’s what the other company was asking for it.” (By the way if you’re bluffing sometimes they will call the other company to see if it’s true, but usually they won’t unless it’s an actual price match scenario.) You might not get that bed for $700 unless you really fight it out, but imagine you got that bed for $800-$900, that would be a $100-200 savings for a couple of minutes of your time.
Another thing don’t pretend like you’re not interested. If you pretend like you’re not interested in the item the salesperson will think to themselves, “Is this person even going to buy? I shouldn’t even bother negotiating with this person because they probably aren’t going to buy even if I give them the price and add-on features they want.” A better way to go about it is telling them you are definitely interested, but the numbers aren’t working for you, or you can’t afford those numbers or you only have a certain amount in your budget allocated for that particular item. A good salesperson will bend over backwords to try to create a win-win situation. Sometimes a deal can’t be made, but you have to try.
There are too many tire kickers around that waste a salespersons time with no sincere intentions of purchasing. If you can distinguish your self from a tire kicker they will be more receptive in hearing what you have to say and will work and negotiate with you.
I have several friends that always take me to the car dealerships with them. Cars are the same as everything else except you can get much bigger discounts than with most other negotiable products (due to the high mark up). You can get literally thousands of dollars off of the cars asking price by negotiating the price down. A car dealership will give you a hard time on the pricing and keep coming back with counteroffers. Only you know what you can pay and if you stick to your guns you’ll be surprised how low these dealers will go. I’ve had to negotiate with dealers for 3-4 hours straight, but guess what I saved $8,000 off of their asking price and that was just with my last car. Yes it was time consuming, but is $8,000 worth 4 hours of your time? It’s definitely worth it for me. I’ve negotiated several of these deals for myself and for friends and it’s always worth it. On the same note if the deal is great, I’ll try to get something off the price, but I won’t fight it very hard if I can’t get a steep discount. Some deals are just so good there is not much room to fiddle with the price.
I’m not telling you to go to McDonald’s and fight for 20 cents off of a burger or going to Walmart and trying to get a discount on most of the items, but for services and physical products especially with smaller companies you can most likely get a discount since a lot of the prices aren’t set in stone. This is especially helpful if you buy products overseas, those companies are customarily expecting negotiations and won’t give you the best price unless you fight for it.