You are Pere Argelich-Boada, 49, CEO of Aceros Llobregat, a 110-year-old Catalan specialty-steel firm in Sant Boi de Llobregat (Barcelona). Three rounds into a five-year tool-steel supply negotiation with Hatsumi Industries in Osaka, the deal you assumed was almost closed has gone strangely quiet. The fourth round is in seven days and you can't tell what went wrong.
The situation
Aceros Llobregat produces precision tool-steel for automotive die-and-stamping applications — €82M revenue, 220 employees, fourth-generation family ownership (you own 41%, your sister Núria the other 41%, two cousins the remainder). The Hatsumi contract — €38M annual revenue across five years, with right-of-first-refusal on a Tier-2 NipponSenSha component program — would be the firm's largest single contract and would anchor capacity for a planned Sant Boi expansion. Hatsumi is a keiretsu-affiliated supplier of stamped automotive parts to Toyota, Honda and Subaru.
Three rounds: Round 1 (Barcelona, January) was social — the Hatsumi delegation toured the Sant Boi facility, met the family, dined twice. Round 2 (Osaka, March) was technical — material specs, QA protocols, lab-test calibrations. You presented a 23-slide deck with pricing and contract terms and asked for "feedback by month-end". You got it back, in writing, with no objections. Round 3 (Barcelona, April) was meant to be the close. You presented the term sheet. Mr. Tanaka (your counterpart, Director of Procurement) said "this is interesting, we will think carefully and return to this with the necessary considerations." The delegation flew home. Two weeks of silence. Then a polite note proposing a fourth round "to continue discussion." Your operations director, Marcel Vergés, thinks the Japanese are stalling. Your sister Núria — who lived in Tokyo for six years — thinks something went wrong in Round 3 and you didn't notice.