Most negotiations don’t fail because someone asked for the wrong thing. They fail, or set the relationship up for future problems, because of how the ask was made. That’s the part people sometimes underestimate.
As negotiators, we tend to focus on outcomes. Did we meet the pricing goals? Did we get the important concessions? Did we get to yes? Sure, those things can be critically important for our own business, but negotiation isn’t just about the result you land on. It’s about the path you take to get there and what that path signals to your partners, competitors, and the market along the way.
Treating People Right: Before, During, and After
The “how” in negotiation matters because people don’t forget how they were treated, even if they agree to your demands. The part many people forget is the ongoing partnership and day-to-day interactions after the contract is signed. SRM consistently reminds our clients that our negotiations will always be done in the context of how the financial institution and vendor interact “the day after” our negotiations end.
I’ve seen plenty of deals where one side technically “won,” and then spent the next years wondering why their service slipped, responsiveness dried up, and every future conversation felt harder than it should have been. Nothing was broken on paper, but trust was lost.
There’s a common belief that if the outcome is good enough, the process doesn’t really matter. The end justifies the means. In practice, this rarely holds up. Pressure tactics, surprise or last-minute demands, and take-it-or-leave-it positioning might get you across the finish line, but they also send a very clear message about how you operate and the other side is paying attention, even if they don’t say it out loud.
Market interactions don’t happen in a vacuum. People talk internally, compare notes, and markets have long memories. Over time, companies earn reputations, not from what they say about themselves, but from how they act in negotiations when things get uncomfortable. That reputation shows up later, in pricing, flexibility, how much effort someone is willing to put in when something goes wrong and it’s not strictly their problem.
Internal vs. External Impacts Culture
There’s also an internal angle people miss. The way you negotiate teaches your team what “good” looks like. Are we optimizing for short-term wins, or for relationships that hold up over time? Are we thoughtful, or just forceful? That behavior gets repeated and for, better or worse, this is how culture gets built.
The best negotiators I know don’t avoid leverage, they just use it carefully, thoughtfully. They understand that the process is part of the outcome and that how you negotiate today shapes the conversations you’ll have in the future.
This is something we take very seriously at SRM.
We handle ourselves with the same disposition whether we are sitting with a client or across the table from a vendor. In fact, you often cannot tell which one we are talking to by how we show up. The tone, respect, transparency, and discipline are exactly the same. This approach is not accidental, rather it’s quite intentional. It’s our culture and engrained in our core values.
One of the strongest validations of that mindset is that over the years many of the people we have negotiated with now work alongside us. That doesn’t happen if you win by force or by gamesmanship. It happens when the “how” matters as much as the outcome.
The Bottomline
Getting to yes is important, but getting there by the right path is what lasts.
Published by Bret Herbert on April 24, 2026.
