The feet on the ground donkey work is what makes a deal happen, boss going to sign up is really way past the point of no return. The technical / standards / legal / finance / ops people will want to already have visited new client / supplier / customer depending on their size long before someone big turns up to cut the cake.
These are the people who find out what is really happening and whether new relationship has a chance of even getting off the ground.
Involved in one situation where £15-20k was spent on travel seeing a potential supplier and understanding what they did was seen as a cost until the Technical / Standards and Finance reports were gone through. Lets say this was peanuts V the £1 million plus potential investment that was mooted, said other company went bust 3 months later.