To add to this (writing too much today), most people you will encounter have a positional bargaining approach because it's the default position of a buyer mentality. Persuading them to see value in an interest based approach is a lot of work and the biggest risk is they will walk away and find someone else they can bully. You dodged a bullet, but also the value was destroyed.<p>The more recent work on negotiations includes things like salience models, which are more about building coalitions to apply leverage on a point person instead of persuading them with reason and principle. It reflects reality better.<p>Enterprise sales are a good example, where instead of just winning a feature bake off or doing a good pitch, you need a full coalition of parties to prevail over the alternatives and move the sale forward. This makes sales more of a complex political campaign than arguing and demonstrating to win a judgment and verdict.<p>The strategy in these negotiations is different, and more about eliciting information about needs and motives of coalition parties to align them toward your decision. The tactics involve some traditional negotiation techniques like inventing options and proposing if/then points of incremental agreement, but they are part of a more abstract play.<p>So, learn negotiation , but short version: the map is not the territory and the fastest way to select-out is to go in with expectations that people conform to a map.