When We Turn a Project Down

Saying no is cheaper than failing slowly

An agency that takes every project ends up with clients it cannot make happy, and unhappy clients cost far more than the revenue they brought. We would rather lose a fortnight of pipeline than a year of a client's budget.

The five situations below cover almost every decline. In each case we say so on the first or second call, in writing, with what we would do instead.

1. Something off the shelf already does it

This is the most common one. Somebody has scoped a bespoke CRM, a bespoke booking system or a bespoke inventory tool, and a mature product covers 90% of it for a monthly fee smaller than one week of our time.

The interesting question is the remaining 10%. If it is genuinely a competitive differentiator, the right build is usually an integration or an extension of the off-the-shelf tool rather than a replacement for it. That is a much smaller project and a much better outcome, and we are happy to do that version.

2. The budget and the ambition cannot meet

If someone wants a two-sided marketplace with payments, messaging, moderation and native apps for £15,000, there is no version of that conversation that ends well. We can build a fraction of it properly for that money, and we will offer that — but if the whole thing is the requirement, we decline.

There is always a supplier who will say yes to an impossible number. The project still costs what it costs; the only variable is who absorbs the difference and how badly.

3. Nobody internally owns the outcome

Every project that succeeded had someone on the client side whose working life got better when it shipped. Every project that quietly died had a sponsor who was interested but not affected.

The tell is usually in who attends. If the person driving the project cannot get the people who will use the software into a discovery call, the software will not get used either. We say that plainly rather than building something destined for a folder nobody opens.

4. The deadline is not achievable

Sometimes the date is real and immovable — a contract, an event, a regulatory change. If the scope cannot fit inside it, we say so and offer the version that can. Where nothing meaningful fits, we decline.

What we will not do is accept the date, start work, and inform you in week nine. That is a much worse outcome for you than a no in week one, because by then you have lost the option to find someone else.

5. The problem is organisational, not technical

Some briefs describe a technical solution to a disagreement between two departments. Software cannot arbitrate. Building it produces a system each side uses differently, and the underlying conflict simply relocates.

• Two teams who want incompatible things from the same data
• A process nobody follows now, to be enforced by a tool nobody asked for
• A reporting system whose real purpose is to win an internal argument
• “Digital transformation” with no named process that would change

We will happily run a facilitated session to get the disagreement into the open, and if it resolves, build the result. What we will not do is take a budget to build the disagreement into a database.

What a decline looks like in practice

A short written note within two working days: what we understood, why we are not the right fit, and what we would do in your position. Frequently that includes a specific product recommendation, or another supplier better suited to the work.

Several of our current clients first came to us with something we declined. Being told the truth once tends to be remembered when the next project is genuinely a fit.

Frequently asked questions