PMI’s Pulse of the Profession found that 52 percent of projects experience scope creep, up from 43 percent five years earlier.
More than half. Not from bad planning. From a request that arrived after the agreement was already signed, phrased small enough that saying no felt like the disproportionate move.
That is not an accident. That is a tactic, and it has a name. This week’s Price Pressure Play is The Nibble. The Margin Protection Move that breaks it is The Change Order.
IS SCOPE QUIETLY LEAKING OUT OF YOUR DEALS AFTER THE INK DRIES?
Most growth diagnostics stop measuring the moment the contract is signed. I measure what happens after, because that is where margin actually leaks. If you run or advise a VC, PE, or family office backed portfolio company and your team is absorbing “one more thing” requests without a change order in sight, the diagnostic finds it.
Price Pressure Play #18: The Nibble. The deal is agreed. Handshakes have occurred, sometimes in writing. Then: “One more thing, can you throw in X?” The ask is positioned as small, reasonable, and easy. It is none of those things. It is deployed precisely because you are least likely to say no when the deal is done. Watch for additional requests that arrive after verbal or written agreement, asks framed as inconsequential additions, and a pattern of small incremental asks that cumulatively represent significant value.
The Play they are Running
The mechanism is Commitment and Consistency. You have said yes to the big thing. Saying no to the small thing feels petty, relationship damaging, and disproportionate. The buyer engineered this dynamic deliberately, counting on the fact that you will not jeopardize a closed deal over something that sounds minor. The something small is never actually small. Unmanaged nibbling adds an average of 4 to 7 percent of uncompensated scope per deal, appearing negligible in isolation and compounding to significant unrecovered cost across a client relationship.
Your Counter
Margin Protection Move #18: The Change Order. The deal is done. The next ask is a new commercial conversation. Treat it exactly that way, from the first moment, with calm professionalism, and without apology. Normalizing the change order process is the entire job.
Step one. “I want to make sure we both feel good about how we move forward, and I want to be straightforward with you about this.”
Step two. “What you are describing is outside the agreed scope. I would like to put together a quick change order that outlines the additional work and the corresponding investment, then we can decide together whether to include it in this phase or address it in the next one. That way everything is documented and there are no surprises for either of us.”
Do not apologize. Do not say “normally I would.” Treat the change order as standard process, because it should be.
Commitment and Consistency, working in your favor this time. You are consistent with the original agreement. The buyer made a commitment to the defined scope. Anything outside that scope is a new commitment, which requires a new commercial agreement. Consistency protects both parties, not just the one asking.
The Win Condition
The additional work is scoped, priced, and documented. The buyer either approves the change order or withdraws the request. In either case, the original deal is protected and the boundary is established.
YOUR JULY PIPELINE IS FULL OF DEALS THAT LOOK CLOSED AND ARE NOT.
Every unpriced “one more thing” sitting in your active deals right now is margin that already left the building. Most revenue teams do not have a change order muscle. They have a culture of quiet yeses.
I work with portfolio companies as a Growth Architect to build the change order discipline into the sales process itself, so scope creep gets priced instead of absorbed.
Three signals from this week across Venture Capital, Private Equity, Family Offices, and Capital:
Abu Dhabi’s MGX closed its debut AI fund at $49 billion, above its reported target, one of the largest AI focused fundraises on record and a signal that sovereign capital now sets the pace for frontier infrastructure bets. Source: CNBC.com
Blackstone filed sandwich chain Jersey Mike’s for an IPO, using stronger public markets as the release valve to return cash to limited partners after a prolonged exit drought across the private equity industry. Source: Yahoo Finance
EasyJet agreed in principle to a sweetened takeover proposal from Castlelake valuing the UK budget airline at up to $7.3 billion, another sponsor betting on take private structures while traditional IPO windows stay narrow. Source: Reuters
THE SAME DISCIPLINE I TEACH AT NYU IS THE DISCIPLINE BEHIND THE CHANGE ORDER.
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: recognizing the pressure tactic in the room and protecting the boundary when the easy move is to give the scope away for free.
If you know a founder, operator, or student who would benefit from this, forward this issue or email.
A nibble is not a request. It is a test of whether your agreement means anything after the signature dries.
Weak sellers pass that test by failing it. They throw in the extra slide, the extra integration, the extra week of support, and they call it relationship management. It is not relationship management. It is an uncompensated precedent, and the next nibble will be bigger because the last one worked.
The Change Order is not confrontation. It is the most respectful thing you can offer a buyer: clarity about what was agreed, and an honest price for what was not. Scope that is priced gets valued. Scope that is free gets requested again.
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.
