Imagine sitting across from one of your most powerful vendors—the OEM who built your production equipment,provides the maintenance service and spare parts to keep it running,and also happens to be the sole supplier of a critical packaging material for your best-selling product. They opened with a strong message: “We need to increase our maintenance fees in the next contract. We’ve been losing money for years.” The proposal? A 40% increase year on year.Most would have flinched. Instead of...