The day I stopped accepting 'we'll sign after the kickoff' from new clients

A startup in Austin kept saying they'd send the contract 'right after our call' for three weeks. Turns out they wanted free strategy work disguised as a trial, and I only caught it when they asked for a fourth revision of the proposal without a signed PO. Has anyone else walked away after the second stall, or do you give more rope?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_nancy3d ago

The two-stall rule is the only thing that saved my sanity. I had a client do the exact same dance, kept promising to sign after every call, then hit me with a list of changes that basically meant starting over. I finally sent a short email saying we'd pause work until the PO was in hand, and suddenly they had it signed within an hour. The trick is making it clear that your time has a cost, not just your final deliverable. If they won't commit after two real attempts, they never will, and you're just funding their internal hesitation.

mitchell.avery2d ago

Wait so how do you actually define the "two stalls" though? Like is it two missed promises to sign, two rounds of changes after saying they're ready, or does it reset if they actually do pay for something small? I had a client who did the promise dance three times but each time it was because their boss kept getting pulled into fires, and I was about to pull the plug when they finally came through. But I also had another one who stalled twice, I paused, they signed, and then the real project turned into a nightmare anyway because they had zero internal alignment. So I'm wondering if the two-stall rule is really about saving your time or just a way to filter out the ones who'll be a pain later, even after they sign.