I came across a blog post on Paul Castain's Sales Playbook entitled "A Good Reason NOT to Negotiate."   It seems to me, many people feel this same way about negotiating business deals, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on it with you... 

I respectfully disagree with your strategy, Paul, and here is why. Instead of de-commoditizing yourself, you are in essence 'making yourself' into a commodity by making it all about the price. When you position yourself in that way your customers will only compare you to their best alternative with price.

Having different prices for different customers does not necessarily mean they "have a better price" because what you SHOULD be selling is VALUE. There are many components to your offering (if there aren't then maybe you already are a commodity). There are payment terms, conditions and parts of your product/service offering. Identifying which are the key elements that your clients care most about and what their decision criteria are will enable you to WIN the deal by negotiating based on those issues most important to THEM.

Find out more about selling and negotiating in the 21st century in our new white paper, The Evolution from Sales and Negotiation to Value-Based Decision Making.