Negotiating with Backbone: Eight Sales Strategies to Defend Your Price and Value, Second Edition

9. Negotiating with Poker Players

Poker players are value or relationship buyers in price buyer disguise. Their intent in acting like a price buyer is to force the negotiation into a bluffing situation that will benefit the buyer at the expense of the seller. Poker players are tricky. They are in it as much for the game as for the discounts they aim to extract. They dress up as price buyers to get the preferred vendor to drop price. They block access to the decision maker. Poker players want endless discounts and have spent decades perfecting the methods to get salespeople to give in.

Since the Great Recession, these buyers have become even more prevalent. Companies are working hard to cut costs, so why not demand more from vendors? Procurement ...