Gartner surveyed 632 B2B buyers between August and September of 2024 and found that 74 percent of buying teams demonstrate unhealthy conflict during the decision process, spread across groups that now range from five to sixteen people across as many as four functions. Source: Gartner
Most sellers read that statistic as a training problem inside the buyer’s organization. It is not always that. Sometimes the conflict is not a symptom of a disorganized committee. It is a structure, built on purpose, with two roles cast in advance: the stakeholder who champions you in every meeting, and the stakeholder who never shows up but somehow authors every objection.
This week’s Price Pressure Play is The Good Cop / Bad Cop. The Margin Protection Move that breaks it is The Dynamic Naming.
PORTCO DIAGNOSTIC
Most growth diagnostics measure win rate. I measure what the win actually cost. If you run or advise a VC, PE, or family office backed portfolio company and your team is trading margin to satisfy a stakeholder nobody has verified, let’s find the pattern before your next board meeting does.
Price Pressure Play #7: The Good Cop / Bad Cop. One stakeholder is warm, responsive, and genuinely rooting for your solution. A second stakeholder, who rarely joins a call, is described as harder to please and focused only on price. Every concession the champion carries back is still not enough. Watch for a champion who apologizes on behalf of someone absent, a blocker who surfaces only long enough to apply pressure, and a pattern where the number moves but the objection never fully closes.
The Play they are Running
The mechanism is Liking. The relationship with the champion is real, and it is being used as leverage. Protecting that relationship starts to feel like the reason to make one more concession. It is not protection. It is funding for the tactic. The tell is availability. If the blocker is structurally unavailable every single time, the absence is not a scheduling problem. It is the design.
Your Counter
Margin Protection Move #7: The Dynamic Naming. Name the tactic. Out loud. Not as an accusation, as an observation, delivered with calm professional directness. Naming a manipulation tactic removes most of its power the moment it is said in the room.
Step one. “I want to name something I am observing, and I mean this with full respect for the relationship we have built. It seems like we may be in a dynamic where you are supportive but there is a stakeholder we keep returning to who is not in the room.”
Step two. “I would like to suggest we get that person into the conversation directly. Not because I want to make the deal harder, because I think it is the only way we actually get to resolution. Can we make that happen?”
Use the word “observing,” not “noticing.” State it as a hypothesis, not an accusation. Give the champion a face-saving way to agree.
Authority and Commitment. Naming the dynamic with calm authority signals experience: you recognize what is happening and you are confident enough to say so. Once it has been named, both parties are effectively committed to resolving it directly, in the open.
The Win Condition
Either the blocker enters the room, and the conversation becomes a direct one, which is almost always more productive. Or the champion acknowledges the dynamic, and the negotiation resets to honest terms.
ENTERPRISE VALUE STRATEGIST
I work with CEOs, boards, and investors on one fundamental question: how do we scale organizations and maximize enterprise value. Some engagements start with a pricing and negotiation audit. All of them start with a conversation.
Three signals from this week across Venture Capital, Private Equity, Family Offices, and Capital:
Francisco Partners closed $21 billion in capital commitments across its eighth flagship fund and its fourth Agility middle market fund, exceeding original targets of $14 billion and $3.5 billion and marking the largest fundraise in the firm’s 27 year history. The raise brings its total capital raised since inception to more than $75 billion, closed in what the firm called one of the most selective fundraising environments in recent years. A single technology focused manager pulling in a third more capital while peers struggle is not a market signal, it is a market divergence. Source: PitchBook
Levine Leichtman Capital Partners closed its fourth lower middle market fund at a $2 billion hard cap, surpassing its $1.7 billion target and bringing the firm’s total capital raised over the past 24 months to $6.4 billion across its platform. Lower middle market capital is not sitting on the sidelines waiting for clarity, it is being deployed by managers who have already built the structured equity relationships to place it fast. Source: AltAssets
TXNM Energy and Blackstone Infrastructure extended their $11.5 billion merger agreement through May 2027, after New Mexico regulators found the companies conducted an unauthorized $400 million stock sale and ordered it unwound. A sponsor absorbing a regulatory rebuke and a nine month timeline extension rather than walking is a statement about how much the asset is still worth to them. Source: Source New Mexico
NYU SCALING SUCCESS STORIES
The same discipline behind the Dynamic Naming is the discipline I teach at NYU in Scaling and Exiting the Business for Maximum Value. Recognizing a structure for what it is, and naming it before it costs you margin, is a teachable skill, not an instinct some operators are simply born with.
If you know a founder, operator, or student who would benefit, forward this issue or email.
A blocker who never joins the call is not a scheduling accident. It is a role, cast deliberately, and it works because the seller is too invested in the relationship with the person who did show up to question why the other one never does.
Weak sellers manage the symptom. They keep making concessions to the champion, hoping the next one finally reaches the blocker they have never spoken to. It never does, because the concessions were never the point. The relationship was the lever.
The Dynamic Naming does not require confrontation. It requires precision: stating plainly what the pattern is, in the room, with the same person who has been carrying it back and forth. Once a tactic has a name, it stops being a tactic and starts being a choice the other side has to defend out loud. Most will not.
SAM SPEAKS
I speak to executive audiences on three Growth Strategy 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.
