The mantra, “if you don’t ask, you will never know” is a good one when negotiating an agreement with a new provider. I say, “if you ask for the moon and the stars, but end up agreeing to just the moon or just the stars, you were successful”. Yes, we can all ask for a million dollars, but you also need to be aware that you can go too far, so be reasonable in your “ask”, otherwise you may alienate a provider or two. This saying does not apply when dealing with providers you have already established a relationship with (as this will just waste everybody’s time).
Like you, providers have expenses, budgets and they need an ROI; and what a provider can do is usually based on multiple factors including (but not limited to):
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Size of portfolio being negotiated
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Number of properties in the portfolio being negotiated
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Average size of each property in the portfolio being negotiated
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Location of the properties in the portfolio being negotiated (are they all in one city/metro area or spread out across multiple states)
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Marketing rights (if applicable) Exclusive vs Non-exclusive
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Your “asks” ( what do you want out of the deal: very low rates, no out of pocket expenses, comp accounts, higher revenue return, upfront fees, etc.)
You can also think of what a provider can offer as a whole pie (the total amount of time, money, resources, etc. a provider can allocate to the particular deal you are working on); the larger an “ask” item is, the bigger the slice of pie; which leaves less pie for other “ask” items. So you need to understand the importance of each “ask” item to determine how big of the pie you want it to consume.