Negotiating with Nothing
There is an interesting story that I read a few years ago by a Google employee.
They were negotiating with a recruiter from Google about salary after a multi-month interview process.
This person was looking to get more than what was offered. So the recruiter asked for some time, and came back after some calculations.
They said the meals offered by Google were alone worth $15-$20K at the time.
This was in 2006, Google was already known for taking great care of their employees. There was nothing new that was added to what was offered, just highlighted better.
It worked on that person, and they agreed to join without further negotiation!
You can apply the same lesson in your own negotiations, be it for salary, stakeholder expectations, or even making a sale.
Tell them about how you can talk to the customer, aside from being a great developer, so you can accompany sales teams in sales calls.
Or tell them about how your product can help them in bunch of secondary ways, in addition to the primary benefits.
Highlight the bit you think the other party is missing, it might just make things easier.
But not every story has an happy ending.
The Google employee wrote further that as economy tanked in 2008, they started taking away free food and other perks, making the employees pissed!
So before you apply any tactics, make sure you are going to deliver on the promises, again and again.