Make your final offer

You need more business. You need responses to your offers. But you’re plagued by prospects who don’t respond to your emails or your calls. Or worse, they “dangle” you like a fish at the end of their rods. We’ve all been there.

They react favorably in the moment and then become unreachable. You hear “Yes, we should talk,” and then there’s no response to your efforts to arrange a meeting. Or they say “Yes, I want to hire you,” but they don’t follow through on the agreements you’ve proposed.

Recently, I made a “let it go” decision about Randi, a financial advisor who had given me every indication that she would like to talk with me but never seemed to respond to my emails to set up a time.

I hadn’t been desperate to enroll a new client. (I long ago decided that even if I do need an additional client, it never has to be this one.) In fact, the way I work, I can’t even be sure—without speaking to someone—that I will even want to work with him or her. But with Randi, I was still clinging to the idea that I needed to make a conversation happen. I was being driven by that need—and I’m certain she could sense it.

“How would you handle this differently if you didn’t feel that you needed the next step in this relationship to be that conversation?” my coach had asked me.

“I’d make her a final offer,” I had replied, “and if she didn’t respond, I’d just let it go for good.” And so, I wrote Randi a “final offer” email:

Hi Randi,

I’ve reached out to you a couple of times since you told me you wanted to set up a coaching session, but I haven’t yet gotten a firm response. To be concrete, here is the offer I’m making: