When building a business relationship in the first place, whether it would be a long term one or not matters much. If both parties consider the biz relationship a valued one and tend to develop it into a long-term mutual beneficial strategic partnership, usually business would be easy to negotiate and errors in execution of project more tolerable, so the error margin in contract negotiating larger. For long-term good, people would usually look longer and come up with more beneficial agreement for mutual good, rather then just ‘milk each other’ as best as possible.
On the contrary, when people pay no attention to long-term relationship to begin with, usually they’ll tend to yield every penny from each other whenever possible, taking every advantage they could find on contract, and getting very picky and strict when an error occurs.
That being said, there is no value or moral judgment on both attitude, but the information above will help us evaluate and counter different biz relationships. For customer really interested and find it worth giving a long term investment, they will tend to compromise on minor terms of contract, tolerate more mistakes. This is kind of bargain power we have, and should be use wisely rather than abuse it. If we have the same thing in mind, we’ll make it a flexibility that we could make use of it for more add-value, like push through some weakness, make them take some risks with us that usually won’t be allow for normal operation etc, and at the same time, deliver and treat them with fair attitude and give them what they want most. For those just treat us like a ‘cash cow’ and wanna milk us as much as possible, that doesn’t necessarily means you can’t make deal with them , just to pay more attention to the detailed terms of contract and make it very clear what you bought and what you’ll get from the deal, and preventing any future arguments from happening.
Customer’s true attitude and intension of biz relationship if of essence, from the first place biz relationship begin , we should begin to observe, analyze and make judgment, and regulate our negotiating/manipulating strategy of the project accordingly.