Should-Cost: Negotiate the Cost, Not the Price
AI presenters The analysts delivering this session are AI generated. The research, the figures and the recommendations behind them are our own.
Negotiating down from the vendor's number means the vendor set the anchor, and everything after that is gravity. Should-cost work flips the table: you build an independent, defensible view of what it costs to deliver the thing, and you negotiate up from that.
Live on the sample workspace, the model assembles from paper: the invoices read as a cost record with every line checked against the contract behind it, then the scenario desk turning components and market evidence into a supported target over the full term, with the reasoning attached.
Between the segments, the advisory desk defines should-cost precisely and explains why credible beats perfect, builds the clean sheet from four sources when the supplier will not help, and lays out the three rules for bringing a cost model into the room: questions before conclusions, solid lines shared, and a gap framed as structure.
- 0:00Countdown
- 0:30Welcome: the price is an opinion, the cost is a fact
- 2:15Advisory desk: the price is an opinion
- 4:01The cost structure breakdown
- 5:19Advisory desk: the clean sheet without their help
- 7:06Live: paid lines to a supported target
- 10:30Advisory desk: the model in the room
- 12:10The should-cost playbook
- 13:11Advisory desk: your first should-cost
- 14:50Your next step
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