Sometimes in business you miss the mark, thankfully I can say that we rarely miss once at the proposal stage. However, that was not the case here. We recently had a substantial proposal rejected.
A large firm found fusedlogic.com on the Internet via our social media efforts. A top-exec touched base with me, which led to meetings over coffee and even dinner with other top-execs from the company.
This particular company has approximately 5000 employees and is about to launch Sharepoint and they thought (and rightfully so) that they should have a social media strategy in place so that their employees would all be on the same page and so that they could maximize the intelligence of this new development. Typically in a corporation of this size, it's the communications department which handles this type of issue and so there was a request for a proposal from us. We had their project lead fill out a detailed workbook which helped identify needs and expectations. We had a meeting to go through the workbook and another to walk through the proposal, this was in person and with the decision-makers. When asked what size of budget range we needed to be in we where told "give us the Cadillac version and we'll go from there." This suggested that there may be a round of negotiations if we were off the mark.
Well not only were we off the mark but clearly my idea of a Cadillac was quite different from theirs. They were expecting more of a Lada. This was not only a perception of value but not understanding the required work and risks should they not proceed. What's more it turns out they didn't have the budget, the President (not part of the discussion to that point) took a minute and said, "umm, I think we can handle this ourselves." This is actually evidence of a lack of motivation to re-direct available resources to this project. If the priority was high enough, the budget would have been there.
fusedlogic is constantly educating our clients about what's truly involved in a successful social media strategy. We obviously failed to do that here. Typically we find that many, including this client, think that social media is about the technology and that their IT department or inexperienced communications department can handle it...Then a company goes and creates a social network of their own in an attempt to build community and "control" the message... Below is what that looks like...
Here's what happens when they don't get it.
By time they realize it's actually about people helping people, culture, the experience itself, conversation and anthropology they've lost a ton of time, money, resources and even people...I really hope that doesn't happen here but that's where they're headed at last glance.
Anyway, the moral of this story for me is, to first and foremost stick to the process that works for us. Always be upfront and communicate openly and clearly about budget and expectations. This is a reminder of what not to do and to trust one's gut. In this case, I was willing to go off track and allow them to take me off my game. We just couldn't get as much access to the decision-makers as we normally would of liked and that bothered me throughout the process. My mistake is not stopping to fix the problem. That fact cost us in the end. Thankfully, we're very busy and can absorb that loss in invested resources regarding the time and effort on the proposal and sales cycle.
Not all is lost however, there is some good news. We've been asked by another department within this organization to help with their "external" strategy and the communication is much more open this time as it's with the executive who found us in the first place.
Sending us some positive vibes still wouldn't hurt though and would certainly be appreciated, we're all connected energy afterall...
Cheers everyone have a very profitable day and I'll keep you posted...
Walter
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