For one of my first jobs I negotiated a better offer because "strings" on the document revealed the previous offer they'd sent out, and made me confident I could ask for more.

Though, makes me wonder if someone has intentionally sent out offers like that with lower numbers to make people think they're outsmarting them.

Never match wits with a stringscillian!

Similarly, I’ve been sent PDF proposal letters by my customers with redacted pricing from my competitors so I can compare the scope against mine. A simple unflatten reveals the price along with the scope.

To be fair handling Word documents is much more complex than redacting a PDF properly.

You don’t even need a digital format for this. When I was a consultant I waited in a room with a flip chart for a negotiation. I flipped through the “old slides” of the flip chart and found one where they did budget planning for the project. This was very good background info for the negotiations.

Yup. I’ve gotten documents from an Asian country’s government. One known for its good governance and meritocracy, that had hidden sheets with competitor data.

Don’t underestimate work shoved onto a university intern.