Practice: Responding to offers

For: Sellers (fleet managers, org admins) · Cypress Managers acting for a delegating org

The decision

By the time an offer reaches a person, Offer Rules have already answered everything they could — the offer sitting in front of you is, by definition, one that needed a human. The practice question is what to do with it: accept, counter, or reject, and how much of that decision is actually yours to make versus your Cypress Manager's, depending on what the organization delegated.

The principle

Every reviewed offer belongs to the seller's Fleet Manager, unless the org has turned on delegation in Settings → Organization → Permissions. Two switches matter, and they split cleanly: countering is negotiation and comes with the lifecycle switch — a Cypress Manager can work a buyer up without any further grant. Accepting and rejecting are disposal and need the separate sell-decisions switch. One offer is never delegable regardless: anything below the floor waits for the seller's own Fleet Manager, always — the app shows a Sequoia warning before an FM accepts one anyway, and the decision logs as below floor — waived by FM.

A sent counter starts a 48-hour clock on the buyer's side. The clock is a tool, not a countdown to dread: a counter that expires with nothing else open just returns the vehicle to live, so the cost of a considered counter is time, not the listing. What's worth reading before deciding is the Offer check card's recommendation and, on Cedar, Sakura's reasoning — distance from floor and ask, the vehicle's temperature, comparable clearing prices — the same read that produces the panel's Sequoia Pick chip on the strongest open offer.

Worked example

Dan at Birchwood Logistics offers $28,200 on the Transit — inside the review band, below Maria's $29,000 floor. Acme has delegated review-range decisions to Cypress, so Alex counters at $30,000 with a note about recent service records. The 48-hour clock starts. Dan counters back at $29,200 — the thread resets as a fresh offer at that amount, and because $29,200 clears the $29,000 floor, it lands inside the range Alex may decide. He accepts. The activity feed logs it with a Cypress · on behalf badge, Maria is notified, every other open offer on the Transit is declined automatically, and the closing opens at $29,200. Had Dan held at $28,200 instead, only Maria could have said yes — below the floor, Alex's only moves were countering or declining, and declining below floor isn't his to make either; the offer would simply have waited for her.

Signals to watch

• The Offer check card's read, before you touch Accept or Reject — it scores the amount against your floor and ask and names what it recommends.
• Whether the offer is flagged below floor. That single fact decides who is even allowed to accept it, independent of any delegation your org has turned on.
• The Sequoia Pick chip, when more than one offer is open — it marks the strongest one, so a queue of offers doesn't have to be read cold.
• The clock, once you've countered. A counter that's about to expire with a buyer who's gone quiet is a signal to check in, not to assume the deal died.

Common mistakes

• Reading "below floor" as a hard no. It's a consent gate, not a ceiling — the seller's own Fleet Manager can still say yes; the warning exists so that yes is informed, not automatic.
• Using silent decline as a soft no. It records the rejection without notifying the buyer — meant for spam, not for a real negotiation the buyer should learn something from.
• Letting a counter's clock run out on purpose, expecting it to pressure the buyer. It doesn't — it just expires the offer and, if nothing else is open, returns the vehicle to live with the buyer gone.

Related

• Offers, counters & Buy Now
• Offer Rules: your auction bands
• The three prices