A buyer asks, "Can you do any better on the price?" Most artists feel their stomach drop — like they just lost something. I don't accept that premise.
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It's my strongly held belief that more art gets sold at a discount than at full price — especially at higher price points, especially in person. Once you know that, everything changes. You can prepare for negotiation, and you can negotiate on your terms. Last episode we covered the maths of pricing your art for Q4. This one is what happens after the price is on the wall: the rules, the tradecraft, and why the buyer who negotiates is the best thing that ever happened to you.
In this episode:
- The premise I refuse to accept: that entering a negotiation means you're the one losing
- How I learned to reject a premise — the story of why I haven't been offended in decades
- A car dealer, a real estate agent, and Thomas Crown — why negotiating an art sale is different from every negotiation you've seen
- The one metric (new customers acquired per year) and the long game: you're not playing a one-shot game, and that changes everything
- Sun Tzu was right — the battle is won before it starts
- Your three rules: know your floor, have a range of pricing, and never give something up without getting something in return
- Why negotiation is the greatest thing that's ever happened: it signals intent
- My Craigslist career — over a million dollars of cars, boats, and gear, and what the "$7,500 cash, I'll pick it up today" guy taught me
- The serious buyer drives over to look at the car — for an artist, that's the phone call or the Zoom
- Get out of the DMs: every step from message to email to call to in-person gets more real
- The asks list: what to trade for instead of dropping your price
- Q4 is coming — which means sales are coming, which means negotiations are coming
This week's homework: write your asks list before Q4. Know your floor on every piece and be comfortable with it. And decide right now what you'll ask for the next time someone asks you to come down.
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