Close: the offer-to-acceptance phase
Close is the fourth letter of the STACK Method. Close is everything from "we want to make you an offer" through "you sign and show up on day one." Offers fall apart at close because the failures look like character flaws in the candidate when they are usually process flaws in the offer. Owners are least prepared for this stage, which makes the process flaws harder to see and easier to repeat.
The failure modes
Three things commonly go wrong at close.
- The counteroffer. Candidate gives notice. Their current employer panics, offers a raise, throws in a title bump, promises everything will be different. The candidate decides a known job for more money beats an unknown company and an unknown boss, and stays. Most candidates who accept a counteroffer are gone within a year anyway; the money fixed the wrong problem. It still costs you the hire.
- The slow ghost. Candidate accepts verbally, then takes three days to return the signed offer, then takes a week to confirm a start date, then disappears. Usually they have a second offer they did not tell you about, or they have gone back to their current employer.
- The last-minute pull. Candidate signs, then calls the night before their start date to back out. Almost always because something happened in the gap between sign and start that the offer process should have prevented.
How to build an offer that holds
Five practices cover most of what an SMB needs at close.
1. Frame total compensation, not salary
Most candidates evaluate offers by comparing salary lines, which is the least useful way to compare offers. Walk the candidate through total comp: base, variable, benefits employer cost, retirement match, PTO, professional development, growth path. The math often shifts a $90,000 offer past a $96,000 offer once it is on paper.
2. Run the no-surprises rule
Nothing in the offer letter should be the first time the candidate hears about it. Salary, start date, benefits structure, non-compete language, relocation terms: all discussed verbally before the document arrives. Surprises in the offer letter are the single most preventable cause of a candidate walking.
3. Address the counteroffer before it arrives
Before the candidate gives notice, have a direct conversation about what their current employer is likely to do. Name the moves. "They will offer you a $15,000 raise. They will offer you a new title. They will say everything will be different." Naming the play before it happens makes it much harder for the play to work.
4. Shorten the gap between sign and start
Long gaps between offer signing and first day are where pulls happen. Two weeks of notice is standard. Three weeks of additional gap on top of that is where things go wrong. Stay in contact through the gap. Send the welcome packet, schedule a coffee with the manager, plan day one in detail. Disappearance creates room for doubt.
5. Assume the best candidates have other options
If your finalist has no other offers, that is a signal, not a relief. The best candidates are usually in multiple conversations. The win is not in beating the other offers on dollars. The win is in being the offer that feels most clearly described, most thoughtfully extended, and most closely matched to what the candidate said they wanted in the interview.
The counteroffer conversation
Ask the question out loud in the final interview: "If your current employer offers you more money to stay, what would you do?" The answer is worth more than any reference. A candidate who says they would take it has told you the truth cheaply, weeks before it costs you a search. A candidate who has already thought it through hands you the reasons they are leaving in their own words, and those words are exactly what you give back to them the week they hand in notice.
Ask it before an offer exists, so it reads as a real question rather than a loyalty test. What comes back also tells you what to build the offer around. If money alone would keep them, your offer has to beat a raise they have not been given yet, and it is better to know that while you are still writing it than after notice is given.
A scenario
A forty-person professional services firm in Dublin offered a controller role at $115,000. The candidate accepted verbally on a Thursday and asked to "think about the paperwork over the weekend." The owner relaxed. By Tuesday the candidate had been re-recruited by his current firm at $128,000 plus equity, and he was gone. The fix in the next search: weekend coverage between verbal yes and signed offer, total-comp framing that made the next offer harder to beat, and a direct conversation about the counteroffer two days before notice was given.
Common questions about Close
How do I make a job offer a candidate won't refuse?
You make an offer that lands by finding out what the candidate wants and giving that to them. It really is that simple, but it requires actually asking. Somewhere in the process, in an interview or a follow-up call, ask the candidate directly: what are you looking for and what would it take for you to choose us. Then listen. When you make the offer, bring their own words back: "You said you were looking for a senior AP accounting title and a base of $80,000. That is how I have structured the offer." Offers should be a conversation, not a document dump with a number on it. The candidates who turn down well-built offers usually had something in their head that nobody on your side ever asked about.
How much room should I leave for salary negotiation when making an offer?
Anchor on the number the candidate gave you, not on the bottom of your band. If they told you $80,000 and $80,000 works, offer $80,000 and there is no negotiation left to manage. When you do want room, five to ten percent above where you expect to land is plenty: enough for a candidate to move you and feel heard, not so much that the first number looks arbitrary. Never open at the bottom of the range hoping to be talked up. Candidates read a low first number as what you think the work is worth, and the ones with options stop returning calls. If what they need sits outside your band, say so in the interview, not in the offer letter.
Why are candidates accepting and then turning down offers?
Two reasons. Either the offer was a number without a story, or something showed up between accepted and starting that you did not surface during the process. A counter-offer, family pressure, a competing process they were still in. Both are fixable upstream. An offer is a conversation, not a document drop, and the closing work starts in the first interview, not at the offer letter.
How do I handle a counter-offer from the candidate's current employer?
Counter-offers should not surprise you, because you should already know why the candidate is choosing you. Throughout the interview process, listen for what they are looking for in a job beyond money: scope, ownership, growth, the manager, the team, distance from a bad culture. Counter-offers are almost always purely financial. If their current company was going to change the things that mattered to the candidate, they would have already. The counter is just more money to make the problem go away. The best defense is making sure the candidate knows, before the offer lands, exactly why your company is a better place to work than where they are now.
Should I lead with the comp number or sell the role first?
Both, in order. The role and the path it opens come first. The number lands as confirmation of the story, not as the story itself. Candidates who accept on number alone often leave when somebody offers a better number.
How do I make a competitive offer when I can't beat a corporate salary?
Almost never compete on base alone with Big Corporate, Inc. You will lose that fight. Small business offers win on combinations: equity or profit-share, ownership of work, faster decisions, proximity to outcomes, scope, a real relationship with the owner instead of a manager three levels removed. Build the offer around what the candidate told you mattered during interviews. If you do not know what those things are by offer time, that is the problem, not the comp.
My offer was accepted. Am I done?
No. The window between accepted offer and first day is when most fallouts happen. Counter-offers, life events, second thoughts. Stay in contact weekly. Send team welcomes. Confirm start details. Closed is not closed until day one.
What should a small business offer letter include?
The offer letter is scaffolding for the candidate's decision, not the decision itself. It should be direct, to the point, and lean on supporting documents for detail. Cover the essentials in the letter: role and title, start date, comp structure, reporting line, employment terms, signature block, and a clear expiration date. Note that the benefits overview, handbook, or compensation plan is attached or follows in onboarding. Do not list every premium and copay in the offer letter. Things that change or run long belong in supporting documents the candidate can reference, not in the letter that has to land in 90 seconds.
How we run Close inside a partnership
In a Fractional Recruiting partnership, the offer construction and the close sequence are built per role. The owner still extends the offer. The recruiter holds the structure around it. After the close comes the part most owners ignore: see Keep.
If you would rather have this run for you than build it yourself, start a conversation. Or start with what fractional recruiting is, and what it costs.