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That partner call where the contract got cut mid-sentence
I was on a Zoom with a Chicago agency last month and their CEO dropped a bombshell, they were pulling out of our joint pitch after 3 weeks of prep. I asked for 15 minutes to walk through our shared deliverable docs and that single saved call kept us in the running, has anyone else talked a fleeing partner off the ledge?
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bennett.patricia10d ago
...and honestly the move that saved us was making it about their pain, not ours. I got the same kind of call once and the first thing I did was stop talking about the pitch entirely. I asked what specifically changed on their end, like what deadline or internal pressure pushed them to bail. Turns out their CFO had cut the budget that morning and they were embarrassed to say it. Once we reframed the deliverable as a pilot instead of a full campaign, we found a way to make it fit their new number. Sometimes they just need you to hand them a smaller yes so they can save face with their own team.
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