The club set a deadline on my player’s new contract. But the preparation told us this one had no real power behind it, well before the offer landed.
Deadlines are a double-edged sword. Real or manufactured, an expiring offer is an attempt to force a decision and exploit your fear of losing it. The weaker or less informed agents freak out about it, and players do too.
But experienced negotiators can win before the negotiation even begins, and this deal was won in the preparation. Here's why:
1️⃣ The negotiator. I’d been doing deals with the same man at that club for 10 years, and the same thing happened every time. He’d put a deadline on the offer, the deadline would come and go, and a few days later he’d ring to ask whether we’d made a decision yet. We’d say no, and the offer would go up. It happened so many times that the deadline stopped meaning anything, and to be honest, I started to lose respect for the person as well. If someone bluffs a deadline once, you know their negotiating style and its power is gone.
2️⃣ The club’s history. It was a big club that used to pride itself on homegrown, local players, with an owner who was invested in the city and wanted to be seen promoting the talent within it. Two seasons earlier they’d let one of their best young talents go. They didn’t believe he would leave, and they didn’t believe he had a big offer from a different club, so they misjudged it and he left. It was catastrophic from a PR perspective, and the fans couldn’t believe it or understand it. The season after, the exact same thing happened, and I was the agent on that one. Again, the fans were outraged that he'd gone to their bitter rivals.
3️⃣ The personal impact. The next season, my player was their final best homegrown player out of the generation of 3, and he was out of contract. If they lost a third in 3 seasons, you’d have had fans in outrage, asking serious questions of the board, the head of recruitment and the coach as well. The head of recruitment knew his reputation and possibly his job was on the line if he didn’t get him re-signed, and importantly, the club knew that I knew all of this.
So when the deadline came, we let it pass, and just as expected, a few days later, a second offer came, and then a third. Luckily, we had credible leverage, and by that, I mean a genuine external offer that the player was interested in taking. It's not rocket science, but ultimately, that's the best way to increase your value in any sport or business in general. With those three factors combined, in the end we signed a deal right at the maximum possible range for this player. It was at his current club, which ultimately, I think, was a win for all parties.
That’s the psychology of a negotiation, and it’s the part most agents skip. They just think of a number and try and bulldoze their way through it, without scrutinising the other side’s incentives, constraints and pressure points, which can be as much about history and culture as market value.
As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago in The Art of War:
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
Now negotiation is obviously not a war, but your negotiating aims are usually adversarial and your zone of possible agreement is thin, so the principle of preparation still applies.
Note: there are genuine hard deadlines, and you need to know the difference. A real one is often driven by something outside the negotiator’s control (the window closing, a budget meeting, a chain of deals waiting on this one), or by a genuine alternative they’d happily sign instead. Verify it through your network, and if it’s real and it’s the best deal available, sign it while it’s still there.
💡 Lesson: Most negotiations are won or lost in the preparation. Work out what the person across the table needs and fears, and their pressure stops being your pressure.
