Negotiate prices or other sales terms
Little of this can be handed to software today.
This work is the relationship itself. An agent can prepare for it and write up what happened afterwards, which is real time saved, but the encounter needs a person present and answerable.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Relationships, negotiation and public-facing presence |
| Jobs that do it | 7 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Resolving Conflicts and Negotiating with Others (4.A.4.a.7) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 7 occupations that perform it.
- Negotiate with contractors on prices for new contracts or modifications to existing contracts.
- Make bids or offers to buy or sell securities.
- Negotiate prices or terms of sales or service agreements.
- Negotiate details of contracts and payments.
- Act as an intermediary in negotiations between buyers and sellers over property prices and settlement details and during the closing of sales.
- Present purchase offers to sellers for consideration.
- Agree on buying or selling prices at optimal levels for clients.
- Negotiate with retail merchants to improve product exposure, such as shelf positioning and advertising.
- Act as an intermediary in negotiations between buyers and sellers, generally representing one or the other.
- Negotiate prices or contracts for securities or commodities sales or purchases.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing. An assistant can prepare you for the encounter and write up what happened afterwards, which is real time saved, but the encounter itself is the work and it needs you in it.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
Who does this work
7 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Real Estate Brokers
- Real Estate Sales Agents
- Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel
- Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products
- Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products
- Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Negotiate contracts or agreements”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.