This is a note I left on the Leedflo forum. It's a group of marketing agency owner-operators. They're in Leedflo to learn how I use Google Ads in B2B and high-ticket B2C situations.
An amazing Leedfloer referred us to a dental practice that asked for help with ads. The dentist sent me a detailed brief: they needed a CRM funnel build, social media management, and paid ad management. They have it scoped and ready to execute. They just needed my price.
They weren't looking for strategy. They wanted a vendor. On the surface, these requests for proposal look like clean opportunities. In my experience, they end up being traps.
This situation is common. We go around asking "do you want a chicken?" "do you want a chicken?" and then someone finally says, "Yes! I want a chicken!" It's very exciting. Then they pull out a fully-formed solution which kind of looks like it needs a chicken, but it's not exactly the kind of chicken we provide.
When this happens the pull to just respond, no questions asked, is damn near irresistible. Why not just quote the funnel, price ad management, and offer the deliverables they describe?
Notice what's missing from the opportunity: any discussion of the actual problem. What outcomes are they chasing? How will they know it's working? How are they currently performing? What else have they tried?
None of this is on the table, because the table is already set.
Our recommended approach, rather than responding right away, is to say something like "your solution sounds right, but we can't with good conscience bid on it." Then try to offer them some value through a case study. In this case, I sent a spreadsheet showing the Leedflo approach to what I guessed is their underlying goal. I didn't push back on the plan. I didn't try to diagnose, in case I have the problem wrong. I tried to offer an honest sidestep along with some advice and evidence to support my advice.
This approach won't win an engagement today. That's ok. In my experience, prospects who show up with a solution often discover, six to eight months later, the solution was incomplete and results don't come as expected. When this happens, sometimes they remember that one old guy who told them something different, who suggested a different framework, and who gave them something for nothing.
Walking away is a discipline worth developing. It's easier when you have a full pipeline, of course, but it's not impossible, even when you're desperate. It's something I cover in my book, "The Sales Momentum Mindset."
I believe in owning the solution. If they're going to blame me for bad results, I want it to be because my plan sucked. Not because I didn't do a good enough job on a plan what they thought would work.
Good stuff.
PS: (Leedflo members also got access to the value add spreadsheet I sent the prospect. It has lots of interesting bits for dentists in the tabs. Useful if you're talking to . . . dentists. Part of being a member is access to tools like that and direct access to me if you need something more specialized. I have lots of examples to help sellers dealing with skeptical buyers!)
