No image macros, here.
A staple of my experience as a professional is meeting a business owner is regularly meeting someone who says
People are so excited about what we’re doing. We’ve had to turn business away!
I heard this in 2007, and I hear it now in 2018. In fact, I was working on a new email series on dealing with time wasters, and I remembered this line. But it’s so egregious, I decided to write about it, here.
The context this statement usually appears in is when trying to hire, sell, or partner with someone. The idea is that people are so interested in the concept or idea that they want to progress the business relationship quicker than the provider can accommodate, so the provider decides they have no choice but to decline.
This is the sign of a time waster. There are really only 3 reasons someone turns down business:
- They don’t want to do business with someone
- They’re not confident they can deliver
- They’re shutting down/changing focus
None of these are impressive. The entire goal of Ditch the Time Wasters is to get you to instantly identify a #1 situation. #2 has a myriad of problems we’ll get to in a second, and #3 speaks for itself.
Let’s talk about the fear of being unable to deliver results. In context, people that have turned down business because of #2 present a scenario where they were in a conversation, a prospect said, "Yeah! Let’s go!" and they rejoined, "We’re not ready yet. Sorry."
This is the sign of someone who doesn’t know how to sell and is ignorant of possibilities. What if I told you that also between 2007 and 2018, I’ve read about business owners who, even when they had nothing to show for yet, managed to get the business and find a way to deliver?
Okay… what if I told you I know people who have sold a product before it’s finished? Now, what if I told you some of the same people humble-bragging about turning business down have done it in the same breath?
When it comes to launching a product, especially software, it usually benefits to have pre-launch customers. That’s normally what a beta is for. One client even had a customer before building their product. Did I mention these were paying customers?
As I said, #2 happens because of the lack of knowledge on how to close a deal. When you have an actual product, it’s tempting to see the value as the product rather than the provider. WordPress is so popular it’s spawned startups focused entirely on delivering solutions such as plugins, managed services, and designs around it!
But WordPress itself is free. The value is in the provider that understands the customer’s problem and can provide a solution. That’s a service which just happens to have an actual software product around it.
What I’m saying here is if there’s a problem you can solve for the customer (and if you can only solve it with your own SaaS product, you can’t solve it), the opportunity for a deal is still on the table.
Now, if you’re concerned about not having enough staff who can deliver, that’s slightly different. You messed that up by not being realistic. (By the way, a lead gen company trying to sell you on their services isn’t "turning business down." It’s not business until there’s a "yes.") You also messed that up by pricing based on time or project completion. I’ve even seen firms have waiting lists for customers. If someone’s willing to wait 3 months just to work with a specific person, there’s no excuse to turn down business because of delivery.
So, what if you’re a person looking to establish a business relationship, and you have someone tell you this. Why are they a time waster?
Simple. This is a person who’s easily compromised and lacks confidence. If that person knows they can’t deliver, but decided to have the conversation with you, anyway, they might be desperate, unsure, or immature. They might under-price themselves and cheat you. I worked for a startup that would do this when they realized they under-priced, and yet never learned the lesson to price better. It’ll give you a headache, so just say "no."
But whatever you do, don’t go bragging about how you did.
I’m the Tech Mentor — a developer-turned-salesperson-turned entrepreneur who believes in life beyond code. I teach people how to stop wasting their time.
I write weekdays on Medium and Steemit. I also run Jogral, a company that I spent more time reinventing than operating.
You won’t find me on Twitter, Facebook, on LinkedIn (here’s why), but you can follow me 