What Negotiation Research Misses About Real-World B2B Deals

Mark Mirra, CEO of Aligned, speaks with Deven Vespi about gender, culture, and why real-world B2B negotiation is more complex than most lab-based research can capture.

Most negotiation advice is built around clean, controlled settings: two strangers, one interaction, a few measurable variables, and a clear winner.

That structure makes research easier to study. It does not always reflect the negotiations leaders actually face.

Commercial deals unfold over months, span regions and functions, involve multiple stakeholders, and often depend on relationships that need to last for years.

That is the gap Mark Mirra explores with Deven Vespi, a global commercial negotiation leader and doctoral researcher studying how gender, culture, and advocacy shape real-world B2B negotiation.

Below is a written version of their conversation, edited for clarity and flow.

Mark Mirra:

Deven, welcome. You’ve been doing a lot of research in the field of negotiation. Can you give us a top-line view of what you’re studying and how it connects to your own experience?

Deven Vespi:

Thanks, Mark. I’m really excited to be here.

For anyone who doesn’t know me, I’m currently doing doctoral research at Paris School of Business with a focus on negotiation. I’ve spent almost 15 years in the commercial animal health and animal nutrition space, and in my last role I was a global lead. That gave me the chance to negotiate around the world, across different cultures and in a field that is still very male-dominated.

When I first started negotiating internationally for a large corporation, I remember asking one of our global leaders, “What’s the deal when I go to the Netherlands? Or Australia? Or Mexico? Or when I’m negotiating in parts of Asia? How should I adapt?”

The answer was basically: figure it out.

So I did.

I learned by experience, and I adapted quickly, but it showed me there was a real gap. I was often one of the only women in the room, negotiating across different cultures, with different expectations around behavior, communication, and authority.

Because I’m a research nerd, I started looking for negotiation literature that spoke to those situations. What I found was that there wasn’t a lot that reflected what I was experiencing.

There were concepts that mattered, like backlash, gender expectations, and cultural norms. But most of the research didn’t reflect the reality of business-to-business negotiation. Those negotiations are multi-round. They involve long-term relationships. They include stakeholders behind the scenes. They are much more complex than a one-shot lab negotiation.

That’s what I’m focusing on now: real-world B2B negotiation, especially how gender, culture, and framing affect outcomes.

Mark:

That distinction matters. A lot of negotiation research is done in lab environments, which has value because researchers need to control variables. But those settings often involve two people who don’t know each other, negotiating over a limited number of quantitative issues like price, volume, or delivery.

Deven: 

Exactly. That kind of research can tell us useful things, but it doesn’t always translate cleanly into commercial negotiations.

In a real B2B setting, you may be negotiating with the same organization for years. There are repeat interactions. There are long-term agreements. There are qualitative factors, not just numbers. There are relationships, internal politics, trust, and future deals to consider.

That changes how people behave.

If you and I have known each other for five years, and we expect to work together for another five or ten, we are going to negotiate differently. We are going to signal collaboration. We are going to think about trust. We are going to care about the future of the relationship.

That is a very different environment from a one-round negotiation with a stranger.

Mark:

That’s why so many popular negotiation tactics skew transactional. Anchoring, extreme opening positions, aggressive moves, mirroring. They can work in a one-off, stranger dynamic. But in B2B, the situation is different.

Deven: 

Yes. And there is research showing that aggressive behavior can hurt you in multi-round negotiations.

You might get a good outcome the first time. But if people have to negotiate with you again, their tolerance drops quickly. It is very hard to move from aggressive, transactional behavior into a more collaborative mode later.

In my own career, the biggest difference between round one and round five is trust.

When I’ve had success, it has usually come from being honest, direct, collaborative, and genuinely interested in what the other side needs. In some cases, I did not have as much leverage as I would have liked, but because I had built trust, the other side still tried to help.

They came to the table willing to solve the problem with me.

That came from focusing on the relationship, understanding their business, asking the right questions, listening carefully, and being respectful.

In B2B negotiation, it is never just you and the person across the table. It is also everyone behind you, everyone behind them, the directors, the VPs, the internal stakeholders. Every round gives you more information if you pay attention.

Mark:

We see the same pattern. An aggressive negotiator may get one solid deal, maybe two. But eventually people shift them into a transactional category. They stop sharing. They stop opening up. When the power dynamic changes, the other side often claws back hard.

Deven: 

That makes sense. Most people don’t want to be seen as a transactional supplier, partner, or customer. They want to be strategic. They want partnership. But you cannot build a strategic partnership with a purely transactional mindset.

Trust takes a long time to build and very little time to break.

Mark:

Multi-round negotiations are also hard to evaluate because when trust and collaboration increase, the traditional metrics become less clear. Walkaway points, ZOPA, bargaining range, percent of value captured. In collaborative negotiation, those can start to shift because both sides are challenging the status quo and creating a bigger pie.

Deven: 

That is one of the hardest parts from a research standpoint.

I don’t know if I’ll “solve” it, but I hope to understand it better. There is a lot of learning by fire in negotiation. I’ve had plenty of strange experiences and plenty of moments where I made mistakes. One of my favorites is being yelled at in Germany, in German. That was an experience.

But those moments teach you. You learn what works, what doesn’t, and how context changes everything.

Mark:

At Aligned, we often say you either gain something or learn something. Being corrected is valuable if it makes you better. Let’s shift into gender, culture, and communication. In our view, negotiation is different across genders and cultures because communication is different.

Deven: 

I agree. When you look at negotiation literature around men and women, there is generally a slight advantage for men, although most of that research is focused on individualistic societies. That was frustrating for me to read because I’ve seen some of the best negotiators be women. I’ve also had moments where I felt being a woman gave me an advantage.

But the literature does show some patterns.

One important concept is role congruity. In simple terms, it means there are expectations around how people are “supposed” to behave based on gender roles within a culture.

For women, the expected role is often more communal: warm, cooperative, relationship-oriented. For men, the expected role is often more agentic: assertive, competitive, direct.

That does not mean those expectations are right. It means they exist.

In negotiation, assertiveness often helps people get better outcomes, especially in one-shot negotiations. But for women, there can be a narrow lane to navigate. If a woman is warm and communal, she may be perceived as less competent. If she is direct and assertive, she may receive backlash for stepping outside the expected role.

I’ve experienced that. I can be direct in a negotiation and get labeled negatively, while a man next to me can be much more forceful and face no penalty.

I’ve been told to smile more. I’ve delivered difficult business news and been told I needed to make it sound more positive.

That experience is frustrating, and it is also part of why I’m researching this.

Mark:

Our golden rule for communication is clear, assertive, respectful. Be clear in your expectations and needs. Deliver them firmly. Do it respectfully and professionally so the other person interprets your intent accurately.

Deven: 

I love that framing. There is no difference in capability between genders. The difference comes from the social and cultural expectations people are operating within.

That’s why I’m interested in advocacy.

In negotiation literature, there is evidence that when women advocate for someone else, for example their family, they can be assertive with less backlash because the behavior still fits a communal expectation. They are protecting someone.

My hypothesis is that something similar may happen in business. If a woman is advocating for her firm or organization, she may be able to be more assertive while still being perceived as acting within expected norms, because she is protecting the company.

I want to study whether that creates an advantage.

Mark:

So the gender dynamic may really be a cultural dynamic?

Deven: 

Yes. Gender matters, but culture shapes what gender means in that context.

In individualistic cultures like the U.S., Germany, or Italy, expectations may look one way. In more collectivist or communal cultures, they may look different. There are also “tight” and “loose” cultures.

A loose culture has more tolerance for people stepping outside social norms. The U.S. is a relatively loose culture. A tight culture, such as Japan, India, China, or South Korea, tends to have stronger social rules and stronger social pressure when someone steps outside them.

Japan is a great example. When you are there, you can feel the alignment around social behavior. Everyone is on time for the train. You feel the pressure not to jaywalk. There is a clear norm, and people adhere to it.

That matters in negotiation because the penalty for violating expectations can be stronger in tight cultures.

At the same time, some expectations shift completely. In certain contexts in China, for example, women can be extremely effective and assertive negotiators, and that can fit within the cultural norm. If you negotiate with a woman shop owner in China, she may absolutely decimate you, and I say that with admiration.

So it is not as simple as “women negotiate this way” or “men negotiate that way.” It depends on culture, context, experience, and identity.

Mark:

That resonates. People who have lived across cultures often don’t adhere neatly to one cultural norm either. They may have moved around, lived in different countries, or grown up in multicultural environments. That complicates the picture in a useful way.

Deven: 

Exactly. The more complex the picture, the more interesting the research becomes.

I’m hoping to interview men and women across individualistic and collectivist cultures who have at least five years of negotiation experience. I’d love to speak with people across different industries, including executives and people who have been part of complex commercial negotiations.

At a certain level of experience, some gender effects seem to fade. People with deep negotiation experience can develop the skill, confidence, and adaptability to navigate these situations more effectively.

I’d also welcome conversations with people whose experiences don’t fit traditional gender categories, including non-binary or transgender professionals. Those perspectives could add a lot to the research because negotiation is shaped by identity, perception, and social expectation in ways we are still learning to understand.

Mark:

That’s the value of this work. It's practical, nuanced, and real. It pushes beyond lab theory into the kinds of negotiations leaders are actually having.

Deven: 

That’s the goal. I want to understand how people experience negotiation in the real world, across cultures, identities, industries, and complex business settings.

And if anyone reading this has experience in complex negotiation and wants to participate, I would love to speak with them.

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