Deal Fatigue
The exhaustion that sets in during a long deal process — and one of the most common reasons sellers accept worse terms than they should.
Deal fatigue is the mental and emotional exhaustion that builds across months of negotiating, providing diligence, answering questions, hearing objections, and waiting for closing. It's a real psychological phenomenon, not a metaphor. By month four or five of a process, sellers who started out willing to walk away from bad terms become sellers who'll accept almost anything to be done. Buyers know this. Sophisticated buyers run their diligence and negotiation timeline knowing that delay is leverage — every week the deal drags, the seller's willingness to fight on individual terms drops. The seller who recognizes deal fatigue setting in and pushes back against it gets a better outcome than the seller who accepts whatever the buyer puts in front of them at the end.
Deal fatigue costs sellers real money — usually in the last 30 days of a deal, when they've already given up and just want to close.
Patient buyers know that time is on their side — every week of delay erodes the seller's resolve.
