Why counter offers fail: what 200+ placements taught me about keeping your best SEO

Josh Peacock

•

August 12, 2026

The short answer: counter offers fail because the decision to leave was made months before the resignation. Money is not what your best SEO is leaving over. They leave when they can no longer see who they become by staying. A pay rise gets you in the room, it never keeps anyone in it. Fix growth, recognition and the calibre of the people around them, and the counter offer conversation never happens.

Josh Peacock is the founder of Search for Hire and has placed over 200 A-player search marketers into agencies and in-house teams since 2021, every placement guaranteed for a full year.

Key takeaways

• A-players leave when they can no longer see who they become by staying, not because of the salary sitting on the table.
• A counter offer buys a few months of quiet at best, because the decision to leave was almost always made months before the resignation was handed in.
• A-players quit the work that stopped stretching them roughly two years after it became muscle memory, and nobody showed them what came next.
• Great work that goes unnoticed gets treated like average work, and A-players feel that gap more than anyone else on the team.
• A-players do not want to carry a team of C-players on their back; they want colleagues who push them and catch their mistakes.
• Accepting a counter offer teaches everyone else on the team that a pay rise only shows up after you threaten to leave.
• Autonomy and trust can beat a bigger salary and equity package, even against a company with far deeper pockets.

Out of the 200+ placements we’ve made, the candidates the team has either talked to or accepted counteroffers at their current company, about 80% of them don’t make it to 12 months with that same company

The offer already sitting in your best SEO’s inbox (0:00)

Stop waiting for resignation and have this conversation. Have it now.

I get paid to take your best SEO off you. So let me save you the surprise. Right now, while you’re reading this, there’s a real message sitting in your best SEO’s inbox from someone like me. A real job, a real step up, usually about 15 to 20% more money, and you have no idea it’s there.

And when they finally walk in and hand you their notice, you’ll do one thing that feels obvious and almost never works. You’ll offer them more money.

I’ve placed over 200 A-player search marketers into agencies, every one guaranteed for a full year, for some of the biggest brands and fastest-growing agencies in the world. Which means I’ve watched the counter offer war from the winning side more times than you ever will. Nine times out of 10, more money loses.

So I’ll tell you why they actually go, how to spot it six months before the resignation lands, and the one thing that genuinely keeps them. It isn’t cash. It’s never cash.

The counter offer trap: why more money fails (1:19)

Let’s start with the mistake, because nearly everyone makes it. Your best SEO resigns. You panic and you do the maths on the spot. They’re on 80, you offer 90. Maybe throw a little title at it as well. And a lot of the time they say yes. Crisis averted. Everyone exhales.

Six months later they’re gone anyway, because the money was never the thing.

A healthy salary gets you in the room. It does not keep anyone in it. Nobody quits over a number. They quit the day they realise that in two years they’ll be doing the same job they’re doing now, just for you.

Instead, offer someone better. That’s the real reason people leave. They can’t see who they become by staying. The offer in their inbox is probably a bit bigger, sure, but the number is not why they say yes. They say yes because I’ve shown them a version of themselves they couldn’t see where they were.

So here’s what it looks like from my side of the phone, the poacher’s side. When a genuinely good SEO agrees to move, it nearly always comes down to one of three things, and not one of them is salary.

Reason 1: they have stopped growing (2:26)

This is the big one. The work that stretched them two years ago is muscle memory. They’re not learning anymore. They’re maintaining. And a person who’s stopped growing is already halfway out the door. They just haven’t told you yet.

The uncomfortable bit is you probably promised them growth when you hired them — the development, the progression, who they’d become on your team. Then the day-to-day swallowed it, and that promise quietly turned into a thing you both stopped mentioning.

The fix isn’t complicated, but you have to actually do it. Sell them the next version of themselves, out loud, on purpose.

What can they do in two years on your team that they can’t do today?

Say it to them. Show them the path. Make it real. Get that right, and money stops being the conversation.

Reason 2: they feel invisible (3:24)

Your best person is usually your quietest problem. They just get on with it. Nothing’s ever on fire around them, so you stop thinking about them. And that is exactly the danger. Great work that nobody noticed gets treated like average work, and your best people can feel the difference.

When did you last tell your top SEO specifically what they did that mattered, not a thumbs-up on Slack, specifically? If you can’t remember, I’d put money on it that they can’t either.

Reason 3: they are surrounded by C-players (3:52)

This is the one owners underrate the most. A-players do not want to spend their days working with C-players. It’s one of the most demotivating things there is.

Your best SEO wants to be pushed. They want to be in a room where people are pressure-testing each other, catching each other’s mistakes, levelling each other up. If they’re the smartest person on your team by a mile and nobody’s challenging them, they’re not flattered. They are bored. And boredom in your best people doesn’t look like moaning. It looks like calm, quiet, a little bit checked out.

Build a team of A-players who make each other better and that becomes a place people will fight to stay at. Let your best person carry a team of C-players on their back, and someone like me will offer them a room full of their equals, and by the time it looks like a problem to you, they’ve already had two calls with me and picked another start date.

The retention conversation to have before they resign (4:50)

So this is the part I want you to actually steal. Pause and write it down if you have to.

Stop waiting for resignation to have this conversation. Have it now. Sit down with your best person and ask them one thing: “In a year from now, what do you want to be able to do that you cannot do today? And be straight with me, is this the place you’re going to learn it?”

Then stop talking and listen.

If they light up and the answer is obviously yes, brilliant, you’ve got it. If they go vague, if they can’t picture it, if they look at you like they’ve never once thought about it, that is not a nice chat. That’s a warning shot. That’s them telling you they can’t see who they become by staying there, while you can still do something about it.

Why counter offers fail 9 times out of 10 (5:49)

Back to that counter offer. Why does it fail so reliably? Because by the time someone resigns, the decision was made months ago. The resignation isn’t the start of them leaving, it’s the last five minutes of it. They checked out quietly a long time ago. You just didn’t see it.

So when you throw more money on the table, you’re not fixing the reason they’re going. You’re trying to buy back something you stopped giving them a year ago. And it’s worse than that, it insults them. You’ve just told them that the way to get recognised or properly looked at around here is to go and get another job offer.

A counter offer is a pay rise you only get for threatening to leave, and everyone else in the building learns that lesson very fast.

I’m not guessing at any of this. I watch it happen constantly.

A client comes to us because their best person is about to walk. We get started on the search, and a few days later the message lands: “Actually, we counter offered. We think we’ve kept them.” And the whole team has the same quiet reaction.

We don’t say it to the client, obviously, but we start the clock, because we know that in about three months we’ll get that call again. And nearly every single time, we do.

Case study: the hire I won without matching salary (7:06)

Let me give you a real one, and this time the shoe was on the other foot, because I was the one hiring.

I wanted someone on one of my teams who was at a big US software company: 300 people, raised over $100 million. I could not compete. Not on salary, not on equity, not on any of it. On paper, I had no business winning that one.

So why did he come? Because one of the biggest reasons he wanted out was this: every time he had an idea, something he wanted to build or change, it had to crawl through 15 people before anything happened. He was brilliant and stuck in the queue.

So I didn’t sell him money. I couldn’t. I sold him a different version of himself. I said: “I’m hiring you for your expertise on a lean team. You don’t come to me unless it’s genuinely massive. You decide, you move, you go. I’m trusting you to act like the expert I’m paying you for.”

And that’s what got him.

Not the money, the autonomy, the chance to use everything he knew without asking permission for it. That company had more money than me, more equity than me, more of everything than me, and they still lost him, because they couldn’t give him the one thing he actually wanted.

3 questions to ask your best person this week (8:25)

Before you go anywhere, run these three on yourself about your best person right now.

1. When did I last tell them, in plain words, what they’re becoming here? Not that they’re doing a good job, what they’re becoming.
2. Have they got something in front of them right now that scares them a little? Or have they been coasting on easy wins for six months?
3. If a recruiter rang them tomorrow and asked what the last six months here have taught them, what would they actually say?

And if those answers make you wince, good. That wince is your to-do list.

What actually keeps A-players (9:06)

So the whole thing on one page: your best people do not leave for money. They leave when they can’t see who they become by staying. A pay rise gets you in the room. It never keeps anyone in it. You cannot buy back what you stopped giving.

Your best people are a market. Your competitors are selling to them right now, I know, because I’m one of the people doing the selling.

So my real question for you: if I called your best SEO tomorrow, would they even pick up? And if they did, what would they tell me they’re still learning from you?

If you don’t love that answer, you already know what to do, and what you have to do this week: look after your best person, because someone like me gives them a reason to look up. It’s the cheapest retention you’ll ever run, and you’ve already got everything you need to do it.