“You’re a liar.”
The client didn’t actually say those words but he sure implied it.
What was actually happening was we were in “The ugly duckling phase.”
That part of a new campaign where it just doesn’t seem like it’s working.
… and then a week or two (sometimes three) later, it starts working.
Here’s the story:
It was as small fractional IT shop – two experienced guys, great backgrounds, impressive credentials, trying to make it on their own.
They brought me in to help develop their sales pipeline and I distinctly remember, right around the 45 day mark, they were unhappy.
Not “hey, what else can we try?” unhappy. More like “you’re a liar, you lied to me, and I’m going to drop off a flaming bag of poo on your doorstep” unhappy.
Yeah – it was rough.
But we kept going and by the 90 day mark, you’d think I was the miracle man himself.
They loved the service. They said nice things like “We can’t imagine ever cancelling. This is great. We can see how it just consistently works.”
It just brought them a fresh stream of meetings with the people they wanted to talk to, every single week.
Look, sometimes a campaign is a dumpster fire and you should get the heck out of there as quickly as possible but other times it’s just in a transitional phase and it’s going to work if you just let it cook.
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