Note on confidentiality
The case below is anonymised and slightly composited. The mechanism is real. No confidential data, names, or internal documents are disclosed.
In a senior procurement leadership role at a large industrial group, I ran complex tenders where operational risk mattered as much as unit price.
The incumbent supplier felt secure. Their account lead had a strong relationship with an operational director. They met regularly. They spoke about partnership and synergy. The account lead believed they understood the deal because they understood the person.
They treated the deal like a relationship. The buyer organisation treated it like an architectural schematic.
While the supplier invested in rapport, the buyer side updated the decision structure. New stakeholders gained influence. Financial governance tightened. Criteria shifted from what the incumbent was best at to what the organisation wanted to optimise next. Reliability was still expected, but it stopped being the differentiator. Cash flow mechanics, integration requirements, and risk controls moved to the foreground.
When the formal process launched, the incumbent was blindsided. Their value story no longer matched the scoring logic. They tried to compensate with concessions. They preserved volume, but they bled margin and absorbed new delivery burdens they had not priced.
Sales leaders often mistake the face of the client for the structure of the client. In complex B2B, that is how you cut into your own margin.
📉 Symptom
The Phantom Stakeholder problem. A deal looks committed, then stalls at signature because a new requirement appears or an unseen veto holder intervenes.
👁️ Scene
Forecast call. The team says, “Committed.” Two weeks later the deal slips because “Legal raised a concern,” “Finance needs to review payment terms,” or “Compliance has a new requirement.”
⚠️ Consequence
Operational drag and margin leakage. The team burns weeks of OpEx chasing a signature that is unlocked only by concessions, often trading 5 to 10% of value to satisfy a stakeholder who should have been mapped months earlier.
3. Diagnosis: structural myopia
The disease is Structural Myopia. It is the inability to see the deal as a system of processes, protocols, constraints, and competing functional currencies.
Sales teams are taught to find a champion. In modern procurement, champion dependency is intentionally neutralised. Governance exists to prevent a single enthusiastic person from overriding risk, cash, and compliance reality.
When you fail to map the deal architecture, you negotiate with a ghost.
You pitch operational benefits to someone whose KPI is cash preservation. You agree volume discounts that are irrelevant to the controller who cares about payment terms. You promise speed to a user, then get redlined by legal and compliance.
This is not “procurement being difficult.” It is a predictable structure. Your problem is arriving late with no map.
4. Immediate triage
Stop the bleeding this week.
Stop Rule
Before your next forecast review, audit every deal marked “Commit” with two questions:
- Who controls budget approval (who releases money)?
- Who controls contract signature (who can sign the paper)?
If the names are different, and you have not spoken directly with the contract signatory, downgrade the deal status immediately. You do not have a deal. You have a hope.
5. Mechanism: how margin leaks
When Structural Myopia is left untreated, margin leakage follows a common sequence.
Step 1: false positive
The team validates scope with the primary operational contact and designs a solution that fits operational needs. Financial and risk constraints remain unscanned.
Result: you price “best in class” while the hidden constraint is “good enough at lowest cost to serve.”
Step 2: late stage injection
After the price is anchored, the hidden architecture shows up through mandatory requirements:
- extended payment terms
- liability and damages clauses
- audit and reporting obligations
- security, privacy, or sustainability demands
Each requirement has real cost.
Step 3: concession cascade
Because the team is emotionally committed to the close date, they discount to absorb requirements they did not price:
- payment terms erode margin through cost of capital
- liability caps drive insurance and legal overhead
- audit commitments consume internal resources
Step 4: profitability death spiral
The deal is signed and revenue is booked, but cost to serve inflates. EBITDA drops from healthy projections to low single digits because the contract describes a compliance and service machine, not a simple delivery.
6. Surgery: the interventions
To cure Structural Myopia, move from relationship management to deal engineering. Install systems that force scanning before incision.
Intervention 1: the Stakeholder Currency Matrix
Stop categorising contacts only by title. Categorise them by currency.
- Operations pays in uptime, continuity, implementation success
- Procurement pays in total cost, risk controls, contract discipline
- Finance pays in cash flow, working capital, EBITDA
- Legal and compliance pay in liability, enforceability, governance
Your proposal must contain a distinct value exchange for each currency, especially for veto holders.
Intervention 2: frontal engagement with the gatekeeper
Do not treat procurement as an enemy to bypass. That behaviour signals governance risk and often triggers stronger controls.
Instead, engage procurement early, framed as schedule protection:
“I want your procurement and compliance requirements in view now, so we do not delay implementation later.”
This positions you as pro governance and prevents late stage injection.
Intervention 3: No Go discipline
If the deal architecture is unclear, no final proposal goes out.
If you cannot name veto holders, you cannot price risk. Issue a budgetary estimate if needed, but do not issue a binding commercial offer until the map is confirmed.
7. Tool to install: the Deal Architecture Map
Replace the CRM org chart with a deal map that forces verification.
Stop rule
Do not issue a final proposal if either condition is true:
- More than one critical path status is Assumed
- Any stakeholder with veto power has an empty currency, unknown red lines, or no engagement path
| Role | Typical title | Currency (what they protect) | Veto power | Status | Primary risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economic buyer | CFO, VP Finance, Controller | cash flow, ROI, EBITDA | Yes | Confirmed or Assumed | can block funding or force terms |
| Technical buyer | ops director, engineering lead | uptime, reliability, integration | Sometimes | Confirmed or Assumed | can delay or re scope |
| Commercial gatekeeper | category manager, procurement lead | TCO, terms, risk discipline | Yes | Confirmed or Assumed | controls contract mechanism |
| Legal and compliance | legal counsel, compliance lead | liability, enforceability, policy | Yes | Confirmed or Assumed | can impose margin destroying clauses |
| User influencer | plant lead, supervisor, key user | usability, support, adoption | No | Confirmed or Assumed | can create noise, rarely veto |
How to use it: Most teams only confirm the technical buyer and user influencer. The map forces you to confirm the veto path: finance, procurement, legal, compliance. If those rows are assumptions, you are pricing blind.
8. Discharge checklist
Execute this week:
- Audit your top 10 active deals. Apply the stop rule.
- For each deal with unknown procurement or finance veto path, assign an owner and a deadline to identify them.
- Add a mandatory CRM field: Economic buyer currency and red lines.
- In the next forecast call, ask: “What are legal’s red lines?” If unknown, pull the deal from commit.
- On one target account, engage procurement early and request standard vendor requirements before an RFP appears.
- For every proposal, add a short section that addresses the currency of each veto holder, not only the user.
9. Call to action
You can keep letting your team guess client anatomy and hope they do not nick an artery during negotiation.
Or you can equip them with a scan that reveals structure, veto power, and margin risk before the pricing incision.
AdvantEdge GmbH installs commercial operating systems. If you want a diagnostic on your top deals, request a Deal Architecture review. We will map the structure, locate the veto path, and remove preventable margin leakage before it becomes “just how tenders work.”
Request Deal Architecture Review
