Foundations
What is an offer?
An offer is the proposed exchange you put in front of the other side. Not a product, not a price quote, not a pitch — the complete structure under which you are asking them to say yes.
If deal design is the work, the offer is the thing being designed. Everything else — the lenses, the moves, the maps — exists to help you construct and stress-test the specific proposal you are about to put on the table.
“An offer is the deal you propose. A deal is the offer the parties ultimately accept.”
That is why offer design sits at the centre of Deal Geometry. Every deal that exists began as an offer somebody proposed. If you want better deals, you have to get better at the thing you propose — before, and during, the negotiation about it.
This is not only about selling. You may be acquiring technology, licensing IP, securing exclusivity, obtaining distribution or data access, buying an asset, or structuring a partnership. In each case there is a proposed exchange, and you are the one who has to design it well enough for the other side to accept.
What an offer actually contains
Most people describe their offer as product plus price. In practice the proposed exchange contains far more, and most of it is movable. A useful working inventory:
The promised outcome
What actually becomes better for the other side if this works — and by when.
What you get
Money, rights, access, distribution, data, exclusivity, a reference, a partner.
Scope and rights
Deliverables, quantities, usage, territories, fields of use, restrictions.
Price and consideration
Cash, equity, royalties, revenue share, in-kind contribution, reciprocal access.
Economic structure
Fixed vs usage-based, ramped vs flat, upfront vs milestone vs deferred payment.
Implementation and support
Who does the work of making it real, at whose cost, with what service levels.
Timing and sequencing
Start dates, phases, what happens first, and how long each side waits for value.
Proof and milestones
Pilots, acceptance criteria, contingencies, and what unlocks the next stage.
Risk allocation
Warranties, remedies, caps, indemnities, guarantees, who absorbs a bad outcome.
Commitment terms
Duration, minimums, exclusivity, non-competes, lock-in, and what is reversible.
Renewal and options
Termination rights, expansion rights, options to buy, rights of first refusal.
Governance
Decision rights, reporting, escalation, dependencies on the other side.
A software vendor who only ever changes price is working with one variable. The same vendor who can change sequencing, implementation ownership, contract length, and where proof sits in the timeline is working with a dozen.
The offer is not the pitch
Parties do not evaluate products in isolation. They evaluate exchanges. Your capability answers “What is this, and what can it do?” Your offer answers a different and harder question: “What exactly am I being asked to say yes to?”
You changed the persuasion
New words, framing, deck, demo order, or sales script — while rights, obligations, economics, risk, effort, timing, and expected outcome all stay the same.
You changed the offer
A change to what the other side gets, gives, pays, risks, does, waits for, commits to, or can reasonably expect.
“Capability creates the possibility of value. The offer structures the exchange. Persuasion communicates it.”
All three matter. But they are not interchangeable, and they fail in different ways. When something is not working, the reflex is to improve the persuasion. The more productive first move is usually to improve what you are asking the other side to say yes to.
Promise and credibility
Two elements of an offer deserve explicit attention, because a structural description of a deal tends to underweight them.
Promise
What are you actually asking the other side to believe will become better if they accept? The promised outcome is part of the offer, and it is not the same thing as the underlying capability. Two proposals built on identical technology can promise very different results.
Credibility
Why should they believe the promise, the performance, and your ability and willingness to deliver? Proof, specificity, track record, demonstrations, references, milestones, mechanisms, and guarantees change how acceptable an offer is without changing the underlying capability at all.
Value Creation alone does not fully capture promise: a deal can create value in theory while promising something vague. Risk alone does not fully capture credibility: risk allocation says who bears a bad outcome, not why anyone should expect a good one. These need explicit treatment, and the architecture will be reconciled in a later iteration.
Offers can be structurally weak or strong
A strong offer is not persuasive copy. It is a structure in which what the other side values lines up with what they must pay, do, risk, commit to, and wait for — judged against the alternatives actually available to them — while still leaving an outcome you can accept.
Weak offers usually fail structurally, not rhetorically. The value is real but arrives too late. The economics are fair but land in the wrong budget year. The risk sits with the side least able to judge it. The commitment demanded is larger than the proof provided. None of that is fixed by better messaging.
There is no score here, and no formula. Structural soundness is a judgement made against a specific other side, in a specific situation, with specific alternatives.
Same capability, different offers
In both examples below, nothing about the underlying asset changes. Only the structure of the proposed exchange does — and that is enough to make one version easy to accept and the other impossible.
Example one — enterprise software
Offer A
Three-year enterprise-wide commitment
- All business units from day one, annual payment upfront
- Discounted rate in exchange for term and scale
- Implementation billed separately, buyer-led
- Value arrives only after a long, buyer-run rollout
Offer B
Staged rollout with ramped economics
- One division first, with defined success criteria
- Ramped pricing: low in year one, higher once adoption is proven
- Vendor-led implementation included for the first phase
- Expansion rights priced now, exercised later
Identical software. Offer A asks for maximum commitment before any proof. Offer B puts proof first and prices the commitment later. Which is better depends entirely on the other side's constraints — neither is universally right.
Example two — acquiring proprietary technology
Offer A
Outright purchase for cash
- Full assignment of the technology and all rights
- Single price, paid at close
- Seller keeps nothing and carries no further obligation
- You absorb all uncertainty about whether it works in your hands
Offer B
Field-limited license with royalties
- Exclusive rights in your field of use, seller retains others
- Modest upfront payment plus royalties on realised revenue
- Milestone payments tied to technical transfer and validation
- Seller supports integration for a defined period
Here you are the acquirer, not the seller. Offer A is simple and expensive and puts all the uncertainty on you. Offer B splits the uncertainty, keeps the seller involved, and pays more only if the technology performs — at the cost of retained rights and ongoing entanglement.
The offer as a hypothesis
Deal design runs a cycle: Understand → Design → Offer → Learn → Redesign → Deal. The offer is the point in that cycle where your thinking becomes testable.
An offer is a hypothesis about a structure the other side will accept.
Their response is data. A refusal, a stall, a redline, or a demand for 20% off tells you something about where the structure is failing. The discipline is to read that as information about the design, rather than immediately conceding on the variable they happened to name.
How the six dimensions fit
The six dimensions are not categories of deal — they are lenses for building and stress-testing a proposed offer. The offer is not a seventh dimension; it is the thing the dimensions are used on.
Value Creation
What becomes better if the offer is accepted.
Value Capture
How the resulting value is divided between the sides.
Burden
What the other side must do, spend, and change.
Risk
What can go wrong, and who carries it.
Commitment
How much future freedom each side gives up.
Timing
When value, payment, effort, and proof arrive.
Questions that expose the offer
Before your next proposal goes out, answer these in plain language. Where you cannot, you have found the part of the offer that is still undesigned.
- 01What am I actually asking them to say yes to?
- 02What do they get if this works?
- 03Why should they believe it?
- 04What must they give, pay, do, risk, commit, and wait for?
- 05What do I need from them?
- 06What are they comparing this against?
- 07Which parts of the structure are making acceptance difficult?
- 08What can I change that matters more to them than it costs me?
Deal Geometry Diagnostic
Find out where your offers are structurally weak.
The Deal Geometry Diagnostic reviews a sample of recent transactions and identifies the structural issues slowing your deals down.