What we learned capping proposal negotiation at two rounds

Founder of BrandForge here.

Early on, proposals on BrandForge could go back and forth indefinitely. A client counters, the specialist counters back, repeat. In practice this just meant deals dragged for days over small amounts, and the people most likely to walk away weren't the ones being unreasonable, they were the ones who got tired of negotiating first.

We capped it: one counter from the client, one counter back from the specialist, then it's a straight accept or reject on whatever's on the table. No third round.

It sounds like it should reduce flexibility. In practice it sped up matching, because both sides knew from the start there was no room to stall.

Curious if anyone here has hit the same problem on a different platform, and whether a hard cap like this would have helped or just felt restrictive from the other side of the table.