I guess you could call our experience a negotiation but it wasn't what I'd usually think of as that term. For us, we got several different quotes over the course of months (because we couldn't get PBs out to quote, they are all really busy here and supply is low) and as the time passed, the scope of our project was refined from quote to quote. So they weren't apples-to-apples comparisons. However, I did extract the main items on our list (decking was so much at so many feet, for instance) and try to standardize them a little to get a feel for how they compared to each other. There were two that were similarly priced. Then we decided which PB we connected with the best, had the best rapport and understanding with, and the one who actually seemed interested in our business (follow up call/email/text a time or two over the course of a few months - low-pressure but enough for us to know he wanted to work for us) and sat down to discuss price. We went about it in a very above-board and up-front way, which was our PBs attitude too (one of the reasons we liked him), rather than trying to negotiate the two similarly priced PBs against each other. To start, he gave us our Dream List quote, and we worked back from there to see where our budget could meet the list. We told him about other bids we had gotten and a few concerns we had with both the higher and lower bidders, and said we weren't wanting the cheapest deal but wanted the best our budget could accommodate. We gave up things we wanted from the Dream List to come in at the budget we could afford, and PB offered certain discounts to meet our budget, too. I wouldn't have expected him to offer any discounts that he was not comfortable with, nor was I interested in cutting his margin so thin he wasn't interested in doing his best work on our project. We trimmed about 25% of the costs of our Dream List, and PB offered approximately 10% off-season discount.
For us, it really came down to a combination of personality/business style and shaping the scope of the project to a price we could afford. Having the rapport with the PB has really been important as the challenges in the process have come up - not saying it's all unicorns and rainbows, there have been a few tense moments, but I think it would have been radically worse with some of the PBs we interviewed due to a huge clash of personalities/priorities (like the guy who rescheduled twice, was an hour late when he arrived, forgot his glasses so couldn't read or write anything down for measurements, called our backyard "crappy" and guesstimated a 6 figure overhaul without even asking what we wanted. Never got a quote from him, and I'm not sorry.) Funny aside, I got an email last week following up from a national franchise PB I'd requested to come give an estimate 8 months ago, asking if we were interested in him coming out to bid our project. Um, no.