Hi friends,

Most negotiation advice focuses on how to get to a deal. But a big part of negotiating well is knowing when you have a “no deal.”

In this week’s episode (YouTube | Spotify | Apple), we talk about “no deal” scenarios as a normal and sometimes necessary part of negotiating, one that people often misunderstand or avoid thinking about until it’s too late.

Highlighting a few ideas from our conversation.

1. No deal usually comes down to priorities that don’t overlap

In any negotiation, both sides walk in with priorities and non-negotiables. The problem is that most people are not actually clear on theirs.

We see this often with clients. Someone will say cash is their top priority. Then we pressure test it and suddenly title matters more than they realized. Or flexibility, or working remotely, or a specific benefit they had not fully named until it was challenged.

That clarity matters, because if your true non-negotiables and the other side’s non-negotiables don’t overlap, there is no deal. Simply because the Venn diagram never intersected.

A lot of frustration in negotiations comes from discovering this too late or never articulating it at all.

2. A good process doesn’t guarantee outcomes

People often have an assumption that if they do everything “right,” a specific result should be guaranteed.

That’s not how this works.

A good negotiation process helps you gather information, surface constraints, push toward the edges of what’s possible, and explore creative alternatives. It increases the odds of a strong outcome, but it doesn’t override reality.

If the company doesn’t have the budget, the headcount approval, or the internal flexibility, no amount of clever framing will magically create it. That doesn’t mean the process failed; you just hit a constraint that wasn’t movable.

3. Sometimes the win isn’t what you asked for, but what you actually needed

One of the more interesting examples we discussed was a client of ours who was super focused on getting a very specific and nontraditional parental benefit, as she was expecting a baby.

It wasn’t a standard benefit, but mattered deeply to them. But it also wasn’t something the company was well equipped to offer directly.

Instead of depleting “negotiation capital” (i.e. how many times or how hard you ask for something) by forcing that one point, we zoomed out to the underlying need and realized that this benefit would cost just roughly $4K per year.

So we focus on negotiating her cash compensation, ultimately achieving a $40K increase to her base salary. At this point, the original benefit became irrelevant. She could now pay for 10 years of this parental benefit if she really wanted to!

From the outside, it might look like they “didn’t get what they wanted.” But they actually got something much better by letting go of the exact shape of the original ask.

4. You’re trying to win the whole game, not every hand

We also talked about negotiation through the lens of poker.

Sometimes the best move is to fold, because trying to win every hand is how you lose the overall game.

The same applies to job offers and business deals. If you treat every opportunity as the one that must work out, you over invest, burn energy, and lose leverage. When you zoom out and play the long game, a no deal in one spot can be the least bad and sometimes best outcome available.

This is also why we strongly encourage people to apply to several roles at a time to keep multiple options in play. Optionality changes how no deal feels. Not getting that one offer stops being a failure and starts being a strategic decision.

“No deal” is uncomfortable. It triggers second guessing, frustration, and the feeling that maybe you should have pushed harder or been more creative. But sometimes no deal is simply the cleanest signal that this wasn’t the right hand to play.

The mistake isn’t folding, it’s assuming every hand should be played to the end.

Best,

Gerta & Alex
​Co-founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

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