A founder told me about an “urgent” lead from Manchester. They needed a migration from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365. He looked at the requirements and thought, “That’s easily doable.”
So he did what technical founders do. He scoped it, packaged it, and sent a detailed proposal explaining exactly how they’d run the migration as part of onboarding.
He was helpful. He was fast. He was technical.
He was ghosted.
He didn’t make a sale. He just gave away a free project plan.
This is the classic technical founder trap: you see a problem and your instinct is to fix it. You want to demonstrate expertise, so you hand over the “how” before you’ve agreed the “why” and the “how much”.
In a sales process, that order kills deals. Buyers take your thinking, forward it internally, or use it to benchmark other suppliers and you’ve done the expensive work without earning commitment.
The fix is a simple rule: no solution design until budget is qualified. Not because you need to be “salesy”, but because your expertise is valuable. If you give it away to the first person who asks, you teach the market that it’s free.
If you’re tired of writing proposals for prospects who vanish, this is one of the fastest levers you can pull. Protect the “how”. Qualify the “why”. Then scope.
What to do next: audit your last three proposals and ask: how much unpaid solution design did I include? Next, set a rule for your process: no detailed solution until (1) decision owner, (2) urgency, and (3) budget range are confirmed.
If you want to stop writing unpaid proposals and start controlling deal momentum, you’re ready for the 16-week coaching programme.