There is a piece of folk wisdom in negotiation that refuses to die: never make the first offer. Wait, the thinking goes, and let the other side reveal their hand. The intuition is appealing and almost entirely wrong. The evidence from controlled experiments, salary negotiations, and high-stakes M&A data points in one direction. In most negotiations, the side that opens first walks away with the better deal.
What the Research Actually Shows
The most cited work comes from Adam Galinsky and Thomas Mussweiler, whose lab and field studies show first-mover advantages on the order of 15 to 30 percent of the bargaining zone. In their pharmaceutical plant simulation, sellers who opened first secured an average price of $24.8 million versus $19.7 million when buyers opened first. The same pattern shows up in salary negotiation studies, real estate transactions, and even auction settings where the opening bid functions as an anchor.
The mechanism is not mysterious. The first specific, defensible number frames the entire conversation. The other side adjusts from that number, and adjustments are reliably insufficient. Cognitive psychologists call this anchoring. Negotiation researchers just call it winning.
The folk advice survives because the downside of making the first offer feels worse than the downside of letting the other side do it. If you open and they accept immediately, you suspect you left money on the table. The anxiety is real, but the math is wrong. The cost of an underbid opening is almost always smaller than the cost of letting an aggressive anchor land first.
The Conditions That Reverse the Advantage
The research is not unconditional. There is one situation where opening first is genuinely dangerous, and it is the situation where you have substantially worse information than the other side.
Imagine you are selling a small specialty manufacturing business to a private equity firm that does ten deals a year in your sector. They know the comparable multiples, the financing environment, and the operating leverage available post-close. You know your own numbers and not much else. If you open in that asymmetry, your number is more likely to reveal your ignorance than to anchor their thinking. They will price your information disadvantage into their response.
The practical test is simple. Before you decide who opens, ask whether you have a defensible model of value or you are guessing. If you can construct a credible range backed by data, open. If you are working from intuition and the other side is working from a spreadsheet, listen first.
Preparing the Opening You Should Actually Make
Deciding to open is the easy part. Constructing the right number takes work. A useful opening has three properties: it sits at the optimistic edge of your defensible range, it is specific enough to imply analysis, and it comes with a rationale you can deliver in two sentences.
The optimistic edge matters because opening at your target leaves no room for concessions, and concessions will be demanded. If you genuinely believe the deal is worth $400,000 to you, open near $470,000. Concessions back to $410,000 will feel like generous moves to the other side, even though you ended up above your target.
Specificity matters because round numbers signal lazy thinking. Research by Malia Mason at Columbia found that precise anchors (an asking price of $5,150,000) draw smaller counter-offers than round anchors ($5,000,000) because precision implies the seller has done the work. The other side becomes cautious about overshooting in the opposite direction.
The rationale matters because an unjustified opening is a wish, not an anchor. "We're looking for $475,000" lands differently than "Based on the three comparable engagements we closed last quarter, all of which had narrower scope, $475,000 reflects the actual scope of this engagement." The first invites a counter. The second invites negotiation about the rationale.
What to Do When You Cannot Open
Sometimes the structure of the negotiation forces the other side to open. RFPs work this way. So do recruiter conversations that begin with "What are you looking for?" In those moments, you have two options worth using.
The first is to deflect the question and force them to anchor instead. "I'd rather understand the role and the scope before talking about compensation. What does the budget look like for this position?" Most recruiters will give you a range. That range is more useful information than any number you would have offered.
The second is to anchor before you give a specific figure, by setting up the dimensions of value. "Given the scope you've described, the comparable roles I've been benchmarking are in the $180,000 to $220,000 range, so we should probably talk in that neighborhood." You have not made an offer, but you have planted a range. If they want to negotiate downward, they have to do it from inside your bracket.
Counter-Anchoring When They Open Aggressively
If the other side opens first with an aggressive number, the worst response is a measured counter inside their range. That move legitimizes their anchor and produces a midpoint that favors them. The right response is a counter-anchor of similar magnitude in the opposite direction, paired with an attack on their rationale.
If a buyer opens at $2 million for an asset you valued at $4 million, do not counter at $3.5 million. Counter at $5 million, explain why their framing ignored a major value driver, and let them adjust toward you. The discomfort of issuing a bold counter-anchor is real. The cost of not issuing it is larger and quieter, which is why so few people do it.
The Honest Answer to the Question
If you have prepared the deal, if you have a defensible model of value, and if your information is at least comparable to the other side's, you should almost always open first. The first-mover advantage is one of the most robust findings in negotiation research, and the people who consistently extract good outcomes are the ones who have stopped treating opening as a risk and started treating it as the most important sentence they will say all day.