I screwed up and I knew it. We were sitting in our conference room with a potential buyer of internet assets for a price which we had agreed upon in principal. The goal of this meeting was to close the deal. We had four executives and the buyer brought three to the table. After greetings, their CEO began by bringing up a component of the sale – pointing out the non-optimal aspects of this item, requesting a discount because of these aspects. After a brief discussion, my CEO agreed to discount the price. Next non-optimal item was brought up, discussed, and my boss discounted the sales price for this. By the time we got to the fifth item, I was questioning the sense of the deal – which was minimally lucrative in the first place at our original price. My boss, though bright, was a charismatic sales guy that wanted a deal done and he probably assumed any losses would be made up elsewhere (maybe correctly so).  But I knew he didn’t truly understand the financial ramifications of giving in here – and that is where I screwed up.  I had mentally outlined the return based in preliminary pricing and factored in some discounts which I perceived as acceptable – we were already below my acceptable sales price and I didn’t like where this was going.  As the fifth item was brought up (presumably at this point to further discount the price), I blurted out – “Just because you are bringing up something doesn’t mean it justifies a price discount.” Then I added the whopper; “This deal no longer makes sense to us financially…” at which the entire meeting erupted into pandemonium. When things quieted down in a few minutes, their CEO winked at me and told me that “he expected no less than this from me.” Fortunately, the discount train slowed down at this point and we ultimately consummated the deal – with additional discounts, of course.

On reflection, I should have followed my instincts and provided my team the current sale ROI and a few sensitivity adjustments to show how they impacted the deal return. The goal here would have been to create a floor for the transaction price and to provide a few areas where it did make sense to discount the price. My failure to do so resulted in a lower price where we effectively lost on the deal.  In this case there was a winner and a loser. In a truly fair transaction, I believe that nobody is really happy with the result. This one was on me guys – but it never happened that way again….