My role at my last several jobs involved a lot of dealmaking. Closing deals where you (the company) feel good, and the other side feels pretty good, too — that’s the dream. I’m a good negotiator, and I won a lot of deals. And I attribute my negotiation success to my willingness to be as transparent as possible.

I’ll say more on that in a moment, but first, some housekeeping.

As I discussed on yesterday’s episode of Your Daily Lex (my daily five minute podcast where I talk about literally anything that’s on my mind), I’ve been considering whether I want to offer a premium subscription for diehard Lex fans.

I cohost another podcast, a tech show called The Rebound, and we offer a premium subscription called Rebound Prime. For $5/month, subscribers get bonus episodes, bootlegs (raw, unedited episodes minutes after we finish recording), membership in The Rebound Discord, and the ability to submit questions we answer on the show.

On yesterday’s Your Daily Lex, I ruminated about what I could offer as a subscription. I know a good name for a premium subscription — Lextra Credit — but I was debating what I could offer. Premium podcast episodes? Premium articles? A Slack or Discord?

I think yes. To all. Eventually.

And first up, it’s the occasional premium post. Most articles on Your Intermittent Lex (the thing you’re reading right now) will remain free. But a few, I’ll charge for. Including this post. Inspired largely by the fact that after I recorded yesterday’s episode of Your Daily Lex, someone (a stranger to me) actually pledged $100 to subscribe to this site as soon as I offered subscriptions. Thank you, kind stranger!

So let’s pretend for a moment that you’re a potential client and I’m negotiating with you. I’ve said I rely on honesty, so here’s the deal: I just started my new consulting business. It’s going well. I feel really good about where things are headed. But while they’re headed there, I’m not all the way there yet. There’s work to do. That’s okay — that’s the job!

And honestly, some of the job is building, pitching, and waiting. So I thought this would be a fine venture, too. I am all about multiple revenue streams.

After the paywall jump, some more thoughts on how and why openness works in negotiations.

I don’t mind telling the other party what I can offer. Sure, there’s the — very real, very important — strategy of holding back. If you’re willing to pay $10,000 if you must but you want to do the deal for $7,500, I’m not suggesting you need to offer $10k out the gate.

And I fully, completely, absolutely understand the instinct — if you want to land on $7,500 — of starting lower. Right? We learn from TV shows and generally accepted principles of haggling (GAPH, let’s say) that you’re supposed to start at $5k, have them counter at $10k, and then land at $7,500.

I guess that works fine if you’re only ever going to negotiate with that seller once. But if you’re building an ongoing business relationship where there will be more work to come, you’ve now built the relationship on the premise that — quite simply — you lie about the price. You were willing to spend 50% more than you said you were. I don’t like that.

Yes, you absolutely have a responsibility to yourself and your business to save money where possible. But you also kind of have a responsibility to pay what’s fair. And again, I’m okay if $10k isn’t fair, would be a stretch, and is your if-we-absolutely-have-to-but-please-please-no rate. But if the price you want to pay is $7,500, my advice is that you say: “I would like to pay $7,500.”

Look, there’s nuance in every negotiation. It might not always be this black and white. But I’ve found very consistently, over many deals whose total value has topped at least $500M, that transparency wins.

Multiple jobs have asked me to swoop in to score better economics on deals that are essentially closed. These are deals where the other side thinks it’s all wrapped up, we’ve agreed on all terms. Then they call in me. Not quite The Cooler, but maybe… The Couponer? I’m brought in to see if we can “do better” than the terms we’ve landed on.

When I’ve been thrust into those positions, I again choose candor. “I know you thought this deal was done. I know you’re not going to love me. I’m involved because my company wants to spend less. We don’t close this deal unless we can figure out a way to pay less, and I won’t be doing my job unless I convince you that it still makes sense to work with us.”

I’ve explained that getting a deal below a certain value means I won’t need to get approval from certain higher ups. I’ve explained that budgets are tighter than anticipated. I’ve explained that the person you did the deal with up to this point wasn’t actually authorized to do it at that number, hence my presence in the process now.

The consistent thing is — I’ve told the truth.

And yeah, no one on the other side of those equations loves what’s happening, but I am confident that they appreciate my approach. Just a month or two ago, I had one of these “sorry” calls with a vendor for work. He was definitely surprised that we needed to pay about 20% less than he thought the deal was going to close for. He asked if he could have 30 minutes to think about it. I laughed — of course he could! I didn’t need an answer in real time.

He called back five minutes later and said we had a deal. And that he appreciated how candid I’d been about the hands we were each dealt.

And true story: later today, I have a call with that same guy, because he wants to work with Lex Friedman Consulting. I’m telling you, folks: Honesty. It works.