Walk-away point

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The hypothetical point at which your organisation sees there is absolutely no value to be gained from continuing a fruitless discussion on docs, and will give up for dead and walk away from a negotiation.

In most client-serving organisations, the “walk-away point” is a purely theoretical construct with no physical extension in conventional Euclidean space-time. It may feel like it does, particularly to some risk controllers, but in reality, this is a mirage.

For example, the idea of a walk-away seems very, very real to credit officers — some of their most deeply-held beliefs depend on it — and for legal eagles it represents point, perhaps more aspirational than real, through which if the organisation could only, for once in its life, summon the fortitude to pass it would ascend into some euphoric, higher-level form of Utopian consciousness. For sales, on the other hand, the notion that one would ever abandon any client prospect at any time now matter how hard the going is foolish, crazy, defeatist talk.

There is, in the final analysis, nothing a salesperson would not do — no indignity to which he would not descend to keep the vital signs of an apparently lost cause still twitching — and, since sales, fundamentally, finance the organisation, it is their view that prevails.

See also