Situation five
I get the meeting. I never make the deal.
Not losing, losing implies it was live and slipped. This is the other thing, where everyone is pleasant, nobody says no, and nothing ever closes.
In your words
Is this you?
“When I demo the product it feels more like a science fair presentation than me gaining a customer.”
“Prospects keep ghosting me after I send pricing. Never hear back.”
““We'll circle back next quarter” usually means “we're never buying, but we're too nice to say it.””
“People who want it don't have money. People with money who want it aren't in any rush.”
“This is so simple, why don't people just get it right off the bat? What am I supposed to explain, or do? Why?”
The diagnosis
What's usually going on
The meeting is not the problem. The meeting is going well, that is what makes this so disorienting.
- Nobody in the room is carrying anything. Your advocate liked it. Then they went back to a job where nothing about your product is on their list. Deals move when your champion has something substantial to carry internally, and most demos hand them nothing to carry.
- You are explaining instead of selling. The science-fair feeling is accurate: you are demonstrating that it works, to someone who already believes it works and is trying to decide something else entirely.
- Politeness is being read as progress. Nods, enthusiasm and next-quarter language are conflict avoidance, not pipeline. They are also the only signal you are getting, so you keep forecasting off them.
This is the one situation in the catalog where reading about it does not fix it. You have to do it, badly, next to someone who has done it a thousand times.
Scope
What this is not
- No investor work. Whether to raise, and how to approach it, is a diagnostic and it lives in the Rapid Result called Should You Raise? It is not in scope here at any price.
- Not outsourced selling. I am not your fractional AE and I do not own your number.
- Not a training course. There is no curriculum, because there are no generic deals.
- Not commission on deals I wasn't in. Sold deals only, and sold means signed.
How to buy it
Two ways in
There is no Rapid Result for this one. You cannot diagnose your way out of not closing; the only cheap version is a conversation.
lead option
Results Call
Pay what you wantup to 90 minutes, you set the length
What happens
You walk me through a real deal that stalled. I tell you where it died and why. That is often enough to change the next three.
Pay what you want, including nothing.
full engagement
Closing Results
$5,000 + 20%Phase 1: 4 sessions · Phase 2: 4 weeks
What happens
Phase one, four sessions, on your live pipeline. Real deals, real names, real next steps.
Phase two, four weeks with me in the deals. Not reviewing them afterwards. In them.
That is the container: sessions, counts, weeks. The method is not published, and that is deliberate, see below.
This is the only thing on this entire site that is withheld. Every price, every exclusion, every session count and every reason a piece of work might not be worth doing is published in full. This one method is not, because it stops working the moment it is a document. Nothing else is held back, and you can check that against every other page.
What you get
No document. This is the only engagement in the catalog that ships no artifact, and the absence is the method, not an omission.
What you get is a person beside you on live deals until you can do it without them. A playbook you read and did not internalize is exactly the thing that has not worked so far, you do not have a knowledge problem.
You will also get, at the end, deals that closed. Those are the deliverable.
The price
20% of first-year contract value, on sold deals only. 20% is a fixed number, it is a fixed cost, published as written. Half at signature, half at cash received. No cap. Right of refusal at intake replaces a cap: if the shape of the deal makes the percentage absurd, I say no at the start rather than capping it at the end.
Not sure
If you're not sure
Readiness, $1,000, credits in. Two outputs, and Do not do, because… is a real one. For this engagement it is used more than most, because a founder with no pipeline has nothing for me to sit in.
Delivery
Who's in the room
Me. On this one there is nobody else, it does not delegate.
Peter on this page
(coming)
On camera
“The meeting goes well. That is what makes this so disorienting. Nobody in that room is carrying anything for you after you leave it.”
Start with a call.
Up to ninety minutes on one real problem, and you set the length. If it was worth something, pay what it was worth. If it was not, we shake hands and you owe me nothing.