A founder takes a call, is enthusiastic, describes ambitious plans and asks for a proposal. The agency spends two days on a detailed document.
Nothing. Three follow ups over six weeks, two polite holding replies and then silence. The agency never learns that there was no budget, the board had not agreed to spend anything and the founder was exploring.
Where the process actually breaks
Not at the proposal. At the first conversation, where nobody established whether this person could decide, whether money existed and whether anything was going to happen on a date.
Why enthusiasm is misleading
PR is an appealing thing to discuss. Founders enjoy talking about profile and coverage, and enthusiasm in a conversation is not evidence of intent to spend.
Why the proposal disappears into a building
The person you met has to advocate internally, without you, to people who were not in the conversation. Your arguments do not survive that journey.
Why nobody says no
Declining feels rude and requires a reason. Silence is easier, and it leaves the agency chasing something that ended weeks ago.
Fix one: qualify on budget before proposing
Not a precise figure. A range, or confirmation that something has been set aside. An agency writing proposals for prospects without budgets is doing unpaid work.
Fix two: establish who else decides
By name and role. A prospect who cannot answer that has told you the proposal will be presented by somebody else, badly.
Fix three: ask what the deadline actually is
A funding round, a launch, a competitor doing something. A prospect without a date is exploring, and that is worth knowing before two days of work.
Fix four: ask what happens if they do nothing
The answer reveals whether this is a priority or an idea. A business that can comfortably do nothing usually will.
Fix five: present rather than send
A proposal walked through with the decision makers present converts far better than a document emailed into a building.
Fix six: make the proposal shorter
A long document is harder to read, harder to forward and no more persuasive. Two pages that answer the actual question beat twenty that demonstrate effort.
Fix seven: agree the next step before ending the call
A date, a meeting, a named action. Ending on we will send something over is ending on nothing.
Fix eight: give them permission to decline
Asking directly whether this is realistic gets an honest answer more often than it loses an opportunity, and it saves weeks.
Fix nine: recognise the browsing enquiries early
Some prospects are gathering information rather than buying, which is the pattern in proposal requests from prospects who are just browsing.
Fix ten: treat the urgent enquiries completely differently
A crisis enquiry has none of these problems and every minute matters, as described in crisis PR enquiries that arrive out of hours, and a fixed launch date is the other reliable qualifier, covered in launch timeline enquiries from brands with a date.
Fix eleven: qualify before the first call happens
An assistant that asks what the news is, what budget exists, who decides and what the deadline is means the first conversation happens with somebody worth talking to. Work out what the rest are costing you with what missed enquiries cost your business. Start at try, see features, and the sector view sits under marketing agencies.