The whole article is worth a read. This quote is very true:
Also, don’t give your sales teams too much authority on price negotiations. Given them small authority to discount, give the sales leader a slightly larger level and anything above that comes to your desk for negotiation. Too big of a discount authority will lead to price drops because it’s easier than selling value and doing the hard business-case work. Losing on price is for losers. The excuse department is closed.
From: "Improving Sales: The Excuse Department Is Closed" at: http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/05/the-excuse-department-is-closed/
As a sales guy, I've been falling for this more than once. Happily enough, my boss (@ldubost) won't let me do it too often :-)
(via Instapaper)