Give-get

Give-get is the discipline of never granting a concession without getting something in return, so every “give” buys something back. When a buyer pushes on price, you don’t drop the rate cleanly — you trade a lever: phase the scope, extend the retainer, accelerate payment, secure case-study rights or a referral introduction. A give-get list, written before the call, pairs each thing you can concede that costs little with what you’ll ask for it, so no concession is ever invented under goal-line pressure. Holding the rate this way protects pricing integrity: a clean discount teaches the buyer your original number was fiction.

Source: A standard negotiation principle (concede nothing without a reciprocal ask), taught widely in enterprise sales. This course anchors it to Todd Caponi’s four-lever concession framework — volume, timing of cash, length of commitment, timing of the deal — and his “we’ll pay you for it, in the form of a discount” reframe (30 Minutes to President’s Club Negotiation Masterclass; Caponi, The Transparency Sale — PRACTITIONER). Not a course coinage.

First used in: 3.4 · Negotiation & close