One of our first enterprise deals fell through after months of work.

The customer believed in the product and trusted us to deliver. In the analysis afterwards, and through conversations with a coach, it became clear that a significant part of the problem was how we had negotiated.

That led me to start reading Negotiation Genius by Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman and to take a negotiation course.

I keep coming across concepts and approaches I had never consciously used. Some are small nuances. Others would have changed how we approached the negotiation from the beginning.

What We Already Did Intuitively

Looking back, we already had some useful instincts. We considered contract length, reuse rights, and joint marketing alongside price—elements of what is called value creation.

We tried to make our concessions visible, which has its own name: concession labelling.

And we maintained the relationship well enough to have an honest conversation after the deal had failed.

Where We Fell Short

One gap was understanding the zone of possible agreement, or ZOPA: whether there was a package both sides could actually accept. We knew the customer was interested. We understood much less about what they could get approved internally. A company’s size tells you surprisingly little about the budget available for a particular project.

Another was investigative negotiation. In one exchange, we interpreted a number without checking which costs it included. We continued the conversation with an assumption that should have been a question. That sounds obvious when you write it down afterwards.

The most revealing example concerned perspective-taking and framing. We wanted to protect ourselves against unpredictable additional work. The customer read our conditions as unpredictable additional costs. They were looking for a partner to take responsibility; parts of our proposal suggested that much of the risk would remain with them.

I think this is where “reading the room” becomes more concrete. What is the other person worried about? What do they need to explain to their colleagues? Are they reacting to the price, the responsibility, or something we have not understood yet?

Learning the Nuances

The course has been particularly useful for these nuances. There are things I can recognise afterwards but would have struggled to notice and handle during the conversation. That is something I want to get better at.

Like many founders, I had learned negotiation mostly by doing it. Some habits were useful. Other parts of my approach were based on very little.

I see a lot of value in learning this more systematically. Negotiations can commit a company to years of work, and small differences in how they are handled can matter. For founders with little structured negotiation experience, Negotiation Genius is a book I would recommend, alongside a course that helps work through the finer points.

I am still learning. But I would have preferred to discover some of this before spending months on that deal.