A few months ago, I was riding with a client in my car. She said she had worked with a consultant who was originally from the East Coast. He had told her that people on the West Coast are too polite and they never want to tell you something you don’t want to hear. On the other hand, he claimed, people on the East Coast are much more straightforward.
It would be difficult to count how many proposals I’ve put together for business prospects in the 20-plus-year history of my agency. I can confidently state that at least a third of those proposals, once delivered, received no response from the person who invited it.
These individuals neither return calls nor respond to emails. It’s likely I’ll never see them again, however, the lack of response was—and is—very unsettling.
A few weeks passed following that car ride and I emailed that same client asking if she would be willing to write a testimonial about working with our agency.
She wrote back, “Sure. BrandQuery is the bomb.com.” To which I replied, “Based on our previous conversation, are you being nice and trying to tell me ‘no?'” She finally responded with a very complimentary and succinct testimonial.
My request was not for a response to a proposal, however, it was something that could have made her uncomfortable. As I waited for a response to my reply, I wondered whether she might have felt that she didn’t want to fulfill the request or that it could have been against her organizational policy.
In any case, it turned out well, but that’s all too atypical—especially where business proposals are concerned.
Typically, if I don’t receive a response after a second request on most any subject, I give up. There’s a reason I’m not hearing anything back, and there’s a fine line between persistent and pest.
The point of this whole article is simply this: If you don’t want to work with the person contacting you, or maybe your budget can’t support what is being proposed—just say, “Thank you, but no,” please.
Sure we, or anyone else on the receiving end of that kind of response, will be disappointed. We’ll continue to believe you would have received a nice return on your investment, but at least we have an answer and we’ll think better of you for having given it in a straightforward manner.
After knowing this we, or any other suitor, can move ahead without the angst of wondering why we never heard back.
Fortunately, I’ve heard “yes” to my proposals enough times over the years to sustain my agency through two-plus decades—but the many unanswered messages in between always will be unsettling. And I’m sure I’m not alone.
Jacque Beamer is the principal of BrandQuery, based in Mount Vernon with a new office in Seattle. You can reach her at jbeamer@brandquery.com.
