drive a hard bargain, to

To be a skillful and unyielding negotiator or dealmaker. Sal is known to drive a hard bargain, so I doubt you'll get that car for the price you want.

to work hard to negotiate prices or agreements in one's own favor. All right, sir, you drive a hard bargain. I'll sell you this car for $12,450. You drive a hard bargain, Jane, but I'll sign the contract.

Be severe in negotiating a transaction, make an agreement to one's advantage. For example, It's more than I planned to pay, but you drive a hard bargain. This expression, first recorded in 1836, uses the verb drive in the sense of "forcefully carry through."

To exact as much as possible from a transaction. Drive in this expression is in the sense of vigorously carrying through something. It was so used as long ago as the sixteenth century, when Sir Philip Sidney wrote, “There never was a better bargain driven” (My True Love Hath My Heart, 1583). Hard, in the sense of “unyielding,” is coupled with bargain even earlier, in a translation from the Greek of Suidas (Lexicon, ca. a.d. 950): “A hard bargainer never gets good meat.”