The Heritage Method
The Fox sees the pressure. The Steward answers it.
The full method we teach and use at the deal table. Eight patterns to recognize, seven moves to answer them, and the pages an owner carries into the room.
You will sell your business once. The person across the table buys businesses every week.
This method closes that gap. We teach the pressure patterns so you can see them coming, never so you can run them. The moves are yours to use in the open, with your name on them.
The Governors
Every move answers to two tests.
Before any move is made, it passes both. Hard survives daylight. Deceptive is disqualified.
The Daylight Test
When the other side eventually understands exactly what was done and why, they will respect it.
The One-Year Test
The only deal worth closing is one both sides would sign again in a year.
The Fox: eight patterns to recognize.
Pressure plays run on owners who sell once, by people who buy every week. None require a villain. Each one works only until you can name it out loud.
Frame Seizure
They decide what the negotiation is about before you can, and you spend the day arguing inside their frame.
The tellEvery premise on the table is one they set. You are reacting, never setting.
The Cold Anchor
A first number arrives early, low, delivered with total confidence, no reasoning attached. It is not an offer. It is gravity.
The tellCertainty without a basis. A real number has homework behind it. A cold anchor has a shrug.
The Scarcity Play
Other buyers, other offers, other options, implied to force urgency. Your alternatives shrink in their telling.
The tellThe competition is always just offstage, never named, never checkable.
The Leverage Map
Warm questions about why you are selling and how soon you need to, then your pressure quietly priced into their offer.
The tellUnusual interest in your reasons and your clock.
The Ratchet
The deal that gets worse after you say yes. A warm handshake, a signed letter, then the asks arrive. Each one is small enough to swallow. The sum is not.
The tellEvery adjustment is individually reasonable, and the total only ever moves in one direction. Yours.
The Manufactured Clock
A deadline appears exactly when you start thinking clearly. The committee meets Friday. The offer expires Monday. A rushed seller stops asking questions.
The tellThe urgency intensifies when you ask questions. Real deadlines survive scrutiny.
The Split Role
The reasonable person you like keeps deferring to a partner you never meet. Good cop needs bad cop’s approval.
The tellThe person in the room is never the one who can say yes.
The Fairness Card
“Fair” deployed to move you, not to describe a standard anyone measured.
The tell“Let’s just be fair here” arrives right before a concession they want from you.
The Steward: seven moves that answer.
From reading what the buyer really wants, to anchoring honestly, to closing an agreement that still holds a year later. Seven is a method.
The Named Floor
The boundary beneath which this business shall not be sold, decided in calm before the room gets warm. One precise number, written with a pen, long before any buyer exists.
Outranking the numberWhat happens to my people. Minimum cash at close. The longest transition I will give.
The Read
Learn who is actually across the table and what they truly need before you trade a single thing. The deal lives in their world. Map it before you move.
TechniqueSay their doubts first. Name their objection out loud before they do. It disarms the objection and buys trust.
The Mirror
When they say something loaded, repeat their last few words back as a question. Then stay quiet. The silence is the move, not the repetition.
Sounds like“…the price is the price?” Then nothing. Count to five.
The Open Question
Questions that hand them your problem to solve, and make them work on it with you.
Sounds like“What does this deal need to do for you?”
The Honest Anchor
When you set the number, set it with the homework attached. A precise price with the reasoning shown, the opposite of the Cold Anchor.
Sounds like“Here is exactly how I arrived at that number.”
The Bridge
Move off dueling positions and onto a structure you can both stand on. Trade on everything that moves besides price: timing, transition, terms, what happens to the people and the name.
Why it worksMost price gaps are structure gaps wearing a price costume.
The Close that Holds
Close so the deal survives diligence and still holds a year later. Keep a written running record of everything agreed from the day the letter is signed.
Sounds like“Walk me through the deal as you understand it.”
Know the Chair
The same words land differently in each chair.
Before any move, learn who is actually across the table, and tailor everything to them.
The Artifacts
Three pages, filled in calm, carried into the warm room.
Record of decisionThe Named Floor
Your precise number, the three conditions that outrank it, the calm test, and the one person whose job is to hold you to it when the room gets warm.
Running recordThe Deal Record
Everything agreed, in writing, kept from the day the letter is signed. The Ratchet loses its power over anyone keeping score in ink.
One page, every meetingThe Table Sheet
Your specific best case, what you will name out loud in them before they do, the questions that make them work on your problem, and what you can trade besides price.
“A deal you would both sign again in a year is the only deal worth closing.”
Heritage Platform Group advises on and acquires established businesses. We teach the method we use ourselves, and we disclose where we sit at the table.