For B2B founders whose deals stall after the proposal

"It takes many meetings to close. We get ghosted."

Q: Why do prospects ghost after a proposal?

Most often because the proposal arrived before the decision. The buyer never said what doing nothing costs them and never committed to a starting date, so the proposal asks a question they haven't answered. Silence is the easiest reply.

Q: How do I stop deals stalling in my pipeline?

Fix the order of your sales process. Get the cost of inaction (Step 4), the deliverables in the buyer's words (Step 5) and a committed starting date (Step 7) before you send a Statement of Work (Step 8).

Q: How can I close B2B deals faster?

Put the decision on the call, not in the follow-up. When the buyer has named the cost, the deliverables and the date out loud, the Statement of Work only confirms it, which removes most of the meetings in between.

The call went well. They asked for a proposal. You sent it. Then nothing. Here's why it happens, and how to stop it.

Book a discovery call

Sound familiar?

First call: great energy. Second call: more people join. Third call: they want a proposal. You send it the same day.

Then the silence. You follow up. "Just checking in." A week later, again. The deal sat at 95% in your pipeline for a month, and now you're writing the email nobody wants to write.

It's not one deal. It's the pattern. Every close takes more meetings than the last one, and some just disappear. 🐬

What it costs

Your cost of sale goes up, in money and in energy. More meetings per deal. Deals delayed by a quarter. Deals dying at 95%.

Look at your pipeline on a Friday afternoon. The same five deals in "proposal sent" as last Friday. Each one is a forecast you can't trust and a follow-up you have to write.

Each one pushes the target further out, and chasing is draining. You feel it in your voice by the fourth follow-up. So does the buyer.

The real source

Deals don't stall because buyers are rude or the market is slow. They stall because the right things happened in the wrong order.

The proposal went out before the buyer said what doing nothing costs them. Before they committed to a starting date. So the proposal asked a question they hadn't answered yet, and silence is the easiest answer.

When that happens, nobody is in control of the conversation. Not you, not the buyer. The deal just floats.

And right now buyers move slower anyway. More people sign off, budgets get a second look, every yes needs a reason someone can repeat in a meeting you're not in. A proposal without a stated cost of inaction gives them nothing to repeat.

The fix: the 8 Steps, in order

The 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale move the decision before the paperwork. Three steps stop the ghosting:

Step 4, Cost of Inaction. Before any proposal, the buyer says out loud what happens if nothing changes. Now they have a reason to answer you.

Step 5, Deliverables. The buyer defines what success looks like in their own words. Your proposal stops being your idea and becomes theirs.

Step 7, Starting Date. You agree on a date on the call. No date, no proposal.

Only then Step 8, Statement of Work: sent before the next meeting, ready to sign, in their words. It confirms a decision instead of asking for one. Fewer meetings, faster closes, and no more "just checking in". 🐯

What changes

The proposal stops being a cliffhanger. It arrives after the buyer has already said yes to the cost, the deliverables and the date, so the reply is a signature or a small edit.

Your pipeline gets honest. A deal without a starting date isn't at 95%, it's at Step 6, and you know exactly what the next call is for.

And the chase stops. You lead the conversation, and the buyer moves with you. 🌴

3 questions to ask on your next call

Step 4

"What happens if you do nothing?"

Step 5

"Talk to me about deliverables for the next 10 days."

Step 7

"To which starting date are we committing?"

Ask all three before you agree to send anything. If you can't get a date, you've learned something the proposal would have hidden.

Who's behind this

Simon Severino

Founder of Strategy Sprints, based in Vienna. 2,400+ B2B founders have gone through our programs, practising the 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale until they lead the conversation again.

Before Strategy Sprints, Simon coached 2,000+ teams, including Google, BMW and Airbus.

Questions founders ask

Why do prospects ghost after a proposal?

How do I stop deals stalling in my pipeline?

How can I close B2B deals faster?

Your next call

Want to see where your deals go quiet? Bring your last stalled deal to a discovery call and we look at it step by step, to find the step that was skipped. If it's a fit, the 90-Day Sales Acceleration installs the 8 Steps in your sales process so your team runs them on every deal.