Can we learn anything from Avraham and his servant, Eliezer, about negotiating techniques?

 In media studies, there's something called salience. In a word, people who specialize in a certain field or arena, view life through that lens. A doctor might look at the medical aspects of things that on the face of it have little resemblance to anything medical. The same goes for lawyers, teachers, translators. A salesman will focus on the bargaining implications in a story where the topic is at best secondary, if not wholly unrelated. On a personal note, I studied business for my first degree, and so, whether I like it or not, I find myself primed to look for the business implications in an encounter when they seemingly play second fiddle to the more central, primary topic at hand. 

And so, if we were to look at the bargaining implications and the business import of Avraham's purchase of Ephron's field, and the negotiations involved in Eliezer's deal-making with Lot, it would seem that there's a certain commonality. Both got the raw end of the deal. Not in the proverbial sense of the word - we got one of the places deemed the holiest in the Jewish religion, and Yitzhak got Rivka, the mother of the Jewish people - but still, both purchasing parties seemed to lack the legerdemain or cunning that's prized in the current iterations of tooth and nail negotiating tactics. 

Avraham knew he was getting ripped off, paying a higher price than any assessor would have quoted, and he paid in the best currency of the time, and Ephron made a fool of him at that, making it look like it was only his largesse that led him to concede to Avraham's request. And then, with Eliezer, Eliezer goes in full throttle, saying that only Lot has what he wants, that nobody else can provide it, in a certain sense, likewise, it would seem weakening his bargaining position. 

Interestingly, it would seem that money was the last thing on any of the forefathers' minds. Yaakov also says that Lot swindled him right and left, changing his salary, exploiting him at every turn. It would seem, then, that the paradigm set by the forefathers is to not get too consumed with money, not to think about it too much. It was, after all, Yitzhak's promise to Yaakov, and one that Hashem likewise makes to us in Shema, i.e. if we follow Hashem's ways all of our material needs will be seen to, perhaps hinting at the difference between a cold accounting take on things, as opposed to an economic school of thought that sees worth as not only money, assets and the like, but rather peace of mind, which bears an economic - and utilitarian value - far larger than money itself.