Are you selling too soon?

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The costliest thing you'll give up in a negotiation is usually something you've priced only for today.

Most of us judge a trade by what's in front of us: what this is worth now, what I'm getting now, and whether it helps now. It feels practical. But everything on the table also has a future, and pressure has a way of making that future disappear. What you're giving up is worth what it will become, not just what it is.

I'll use an example that still hurts, because I'm a New York Mets fan.

In July 2021 the Mets were hanging around the pennant race and decided to make a push. They traded a minor-league outfielder named Pete Crow-Armstrong to the Chicago Cubs for two established players: Javier Báez, a very good shortstop, and Trevor Williams, a pitcher.

On paper, it made sense for 2021. Báez was a proven major leaguer. Crow-Armstrong was a prospect, and to a team trying to win that season, a prospect is a promise that can wait.

Except the promise wasn't hard to see. If you looked through Crow-Armstrong's numbers, he had been excellent at every level he'd played. Nothing in his record suggested he'd stall out. The information was there for anyone who took the time to look at it closely.

Báez played for the Mets for a couple of months and then left. Williams never turned into the pitcher they hoped for. Crow-Armstrong is now one of the best players in baseball and a legitimate Most Valuable Player candidate for the Cubs.

Zack Scott, who was running the Mets' baseball operations at the time, has been admirably candid about it. This past July he said, I misjudged him. I did. He also revealed that the Cubs had first asked for a different pitching prospect, Matt Allen, and that the Mets decided Crow-Armstrong was the one they could spare. Have you heard of Matt Allen? Neither have I.

Why does a smart baseball executive make that call? Because in New York the pressure to win is enormous, and it's aimed at this season. That pressure shortened the time horizon until the only value that counted was the value you could see on the field that summer.

That's the trap. It isn't a lack of intelligence. It's urgency quietly changing the question from whether this is the best deal to whether this helps right now.

You'll run into your own version of this. You might sell equity in your company to cover a cash crunch, or accept a lump sum today to give up a royalty that would pay for decades. You might hand a key client relationship to a partner because it's too much work this quarter. Each of those can be the right move. But if you haven't priced what the asset will be worth later, you don't really know what you're giving away.

So before you trade anything, set the emotion and urgency aside and ask two questions. What is this worth today? And: what is it likely to be worth tomorrow? Then look at the deal on the table and ask whether it's actually in your best interest, or just the fastest way out of this week's pressure.

What's in your hand right now that you've only priced for today?

Remember: negotiation is life.
​ – Gene

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