Negotiation is mostly about what happens if you walk away.

Every negotiation has a number that is not spoken: what you will do if this deal does not happen. That number determines everything.

We were negotiating a contract with a vendor. Their price was 40% above what we had budgeted. We had no alternative. They knew it. We paid.

Six months later we were negotiating with a different vendor. Before the conversation, we spent two weeks building a fallback. It was worse than what we wanted but it was real and it worked. In the negotiation, when the price came in high, we said we would use the fallback. They came down 25%.

The difference was not tactics or confidence. It was that in the second case, walking away was an actual option rather than a bluff.

The preparation that matters in a negotiation is not what you will say. It is what you will do if it fails.

What is your fallback in the negotiation you are currently avoiding?