“In procurement, I held price by shifting the conversation away from the number and toward the scope. When a supplier pushes back, I get curious about what is actually driving their cost: volume, risk, payment terms, delivery pressure. Then I trade on those variables instead of giving away margin.”
“I hold my line by knowing exactly what I can trade and what I cannot before the call starts. On a $10.6 million OTA server deal, the supplier pushed hard on unit rate; I held price but gave on payment terms and a modest volume commitment, because my finance team had already told me those two things were cheap for us and valuable to them. The deal closed, and we still cut per-unit cost by 59%.”
“I learned the hard way that holding price is less about the number on the table and more about what else the supplier has to lose. At Beckman Coulter I had a sole-source supplier who thought they had us, but when we mapped the real switching cost and walked in with a qualified second source, the price didn't move because I asked nicely, it moved because they believed we would walk.”
“I spent years on the buy side at Ericsson, McDonald's, and CDK Global, and the deals I held price on were the ones where I knew exactly what I was worth and what walking away would cost me.”
“I have walked away from deals where the only lever left was my price, because once you cut it without a trade, you have trained the supplier that your number is negotiable forever. What I would rather trade is scope, payment terms, or volume commitments, and make the concession explicit so both sides feel the give.”
“I never hold a price by defending the number. I hold it by making the other side feel the cost of the structure they want me to accept.”
“At Weatherford I generated $6.5 million in savings by running extended vendor negotiations, and the ones that stuck were never about the sticker price alone. I held my ground by changing the conversation to delivery certainty, payment terms, and what a failed rig-down actually cost them. If your value is real, make them feel the cost of the cheaper option, not just the price of yours.”
“I held a software licensing renegotiation at Petrofac where the vendor wanted to raise maintenance fees 15%; I walked in with usage data, competitive benchmarks, and a clear BATNA, and we ended up with a 20% reduction instead. The deal stayed alive because I separated the relationship from the economics and gave them a face-saving path: a longer term with staged volume commitments.”