I had to teach myself negotiation because I am not natural at it. I finally figured out a useful hack. My magic words are “What’s your best price?”. I ask it with a friendly, confident tone, as if it were my best friend on the other side of the table. This approach has conservatively saved me tens of thousands of dollars over the years and it is very low stress.

By the way, guitar center doesn’t really negotiate much anymore. They tend to price guitar more realistically than they used to. 10 years ago you could pretty much rely on getting 40% off or so from the price tag, but they’ve trended away from that in the last few years.