Gartner surveyed 632 B2B buyers in 2024 and found that 74% of buying teams experience unhealthy conflict during the decision process, while buying groups that reach consensus are 2.5 times more likely to report a high-quality deal outcome.
Read that again. Conflict inside the buying committee is the norm, not the exception. Most operators read that statistic as a buyer problem. It is not. It is a seller opportunity, and most sellers waste it.
Here is how. A deal you thought was closed produces a new approver. Then another. Each one arrives with fresh concerns and an implicit request for one more concession. You re-pitch, you soften the number, you wait. The unhealthy conflict Gartner measured is happening on the buyer side of the table. The unhealthy concessions are happening on yours. This week’s Price Pressure Play names the pattern (The Escalating Approver). The Margin Protection Move breaks it (The Economic Buyer Bridge).
IS PRICING PRESSURE ACTUALLY A STAKEHOLDER ACCESS PROBLEM IN DISGUISE?
Most growth diagnostics look at funnel metrics and call it a day. I look at where deals stall, who is in the room when price gets discussed, and whether your team is negotiating with the person who can actually say yes. If you run or advise a VC, PE, or family office backed portfolio company and margin compression has become routine, the diagnostic finds the source.
Price Pressure Play #5: The Escalating Approver. Agreement appears within reach. Then a new stakeholder materializes at a higher level than the last. First your champion. Then their VP. Then the CFO. Each new approver arrives with fresh concerns and an implicit request for additional concessions. Watch for approvals that escalate after verbal agreement, stakeholders never mentioned in discovery, and the phrase “I just need to run this by one more person.”
The Play they are Running
The mechanism is Commitment and Consistency. Each interaction builds your commitment to the deal, and that commitment gets leveraged to extract one more accommodation. You do not want to lose what you have built, so you give. The cost is not abstract. Deals that go through multi-stakeholder escalation close at an average of 21 percent below initial proposal pricing, with concessions extracted across multiple re-engagement rounds. The effect is invisible until the final number is on paper.
Your Counter
Margin Protection Move #5: The Economic Buyer Bridge. If you cannot get to the economic buyer, the deal is already lost. You just do not know it yet. Every incremental concession to a non-decision-maker is a gift with no recipient. The fix is not patience. It is access.
Step one, name the gap directly. Tell your contact that given the scope and investment under discussion, the conversation needs the economic buyer in the room before structure gets finalized. Step two, request the meeting and frame it as protecting your champion, not bypassing them. You want to help position the value case correctly for the person who will ultimately approve it, and you want to prepare your champion for that conversation, not spring it on them.
Authority. This works because the Escalating Approver pattern depends on the seller never reaching the real decision-maker. Once that person is in the room, they evaluate value. The people below them review price. Asking for the right level of conversation signals Authority. You recognize the difference between a gatekeeper and a decision-maker, and you are experienced enough to require the latter.
The Win Condition
Either you gain access and reset the negotiation on your terms, or the buyer’s reluctance to arrange that meeting tells you something true about the deal that you can now address directly. Either outcome beats another round of concessions to someone who cannot say yes.
YOUR JANUARY SKO IS SIX MONTHS OLD. SO IS THE PLAYBOOK YOU LEFT THE ROOM WITH.
You set the targets in January. The market did not agree to honor them. Half the year is gone, the pipeline looks different than it did at kickoff, and the team is running January’s plays against July’s reality.
Most companies wait for Q4 to admit the gap. By then the only options left are panic and discount. A mid-year SKO is not a recap meeting. It is the one chance you get to recalibrate the team before the numbers force you to.
I work with portfolio companies as a fractional CRO and Growth Architect to run that recalibration, sharpen the second-half plays, and rebuild the urgency the room had in January.
Three signals from this week across Venture Capital, Private Equity, Family Offices, and Capital:
Buying committees have nearly doubled in a decade. B2B buying committees have grown from 5.4 stakeholders in 2015 to 8 to 13 in 2025, with Gartner data cited as one of the sources behind the trend. Source: Attainment Labs
The buying group, not the vendor, is now the primary obstacle. Forrester’s 2025 research found the average B2B purchase involves 13 stakeholders, with nearly 89% of buying decisions crossing multiple departments, and separately that 86% of B2B purchases stall at some point in the process, often because one stakeholder’s concerns weren’t addressed early. Source: Traction Complete
Sellers get almost no time with the very committee deciding their fate. Gartner research shows buyers now spend only 17% of their total purchasing time meeting with potential vendors, split across every vendor under consideration. Source: Traction Complete
THE SAME LOGIC I TEACH AT NYU APPLIES TO YOUR NEXT NEGOTIATION.
This fall I am teaching “Scaling and Exiting the Business for Maximum Value” at NYU’s School of Professional Studies. The course covers the same operator discipline behind this newsletter: knowing who actually holds decision authority, and building the muscle to require it.
If you know a founder, operator, or student who would benefit from this forward this issue or email
Stakeholder count is not the problem. Access is. A thirteen-person buying committee is not inherently dangerous. A seller who never reaches the one person on that committee who can approve the deal is the actual risk, and that risk is self-inflicted every time it happens.
The Escalating Approver works on sellers who treat each new name as a fresh closing opportunity instead of a signal. It is not a fresh opportunity. It is the same deal, with a new audience and the same unresolved question: who actually owns this decision. Ask that question in week one, not week twelve. The 21 percent you protect by asking it early is not a rounding error. It is the entire negotiation.
SAM SPEAKS
I speak to executive audiences on three RevOps topics.
Scaling and Exiting the Business for Maximum Value. Most operators spend years building a company and weeks preparing for the exit. The ones who capture maximum value at the table are the ones who treated the exit as a strategy, not an event. This talk draws on 12+ years of scaling and exiting experience across 15+ organizations, and the curriculum I am currently developing as an NYU faculty member, to give executive audiences a field-level framework for building toward a transaction from day one.
The Unrealistic Leader. The leaders who build enduring organizations are not the ones who set realistic expectations. They are the ones who hold an unrealistic standard long enough for the organization to grow into it. This talk is a practitioner’s case for why the most dangerous thing a leader can do is become reasonable too early, and what it actually looks like to lead from the front when the numbers do not yet support the vision.
The Price Pressure Playbook. Buyers have a playbook. Most sellers do not know it exists. Drawing from my published work cataloguing 20 buyer pressure tactics and the 20 operator moves that counter them, this talk gives revenue leaders and executive teams a tactical framework for protecting margin, closing at full value, and recognizing the moves being run against them in real time.
From the Tip of the Spear is my weekly publication for executives who are building something real. One issue, every Tuesday. A field report from active operator engagements, one principle with supporting data, and market intelligence from across my VC, PE, and family office network.
