Many years ago, I was negotiating a contract renewal with a large software supplier. Towards the end of the process, there were a number of ‘deal breakers’ that had to be resolved before the deal was acceptable from the client perspective (mine). This is not unusual as it is rare a deal is perfect for either customer or supplier “out of the box”.
We did all the things that you’d expect – wheeled in the Board Execs and traded blows in tough conversations, slowly edging towards some sort of compromise commercials that we could agree upon. Eventually we ended up at a point where the deal was about 90% there but there were elements of the compromise required to close it that were unpalatable for both parties.