The buyer's due diligence team is behaving in a highly transactional, low-trust manner, which is causing our leadership team to shut down and hide operational issues. How do we apply the trust creation process to get the deal back on track without compromising our negotiating leverage?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a buyer's diligence team adopts a cold, transactional approach, it is natural for your leadership team to become defensive. However, hiding operational challenges or shutting down communication will only lead to broken deals or severe valuation adjustments when those issues are eventually uncovered. To break this deadlock, you must actively apply the Trust Creation Process from the Trusted Advisor framework. This begins with the Engage phase. Address the tension directly by bringing both leadership teams together, bypassing the junior analysts who are clogging the pipes. During the Listen and Frame phases, focus entirely on understanding the buyer's underlying anxieties. If they are obsessing over a specific metric, ask open-ended questions to uncover the strategic risk they are trying to mitigate. Frame the issue from their perspective, demonstrating that you understand their concerns. Once the risk is clearly framed, move to the Envision and Commit phases. If you have an operational issue, such as a temporary dip in key Scorecard metrics, do not hide it. Instead, present a clear, automated operational fix that you are already implementing. By demonstrating vulnerability and a commitment to shared problem-solving, you transform a transactional interrogation into a collaborative relationship. This builds real credibility, protecting your deal structure and ensuring a smoother transition.