"Just send me a proposal" is not a yes

"Sounds interesting, just send me a proposal."

For a long time i heard this as a win. Spend the evening on a beautiful PDF, send it in the morning, then wait. And wait.

Most of the time it is not a yes. It is the polite way to end the call.

Your proposal lands in an inbox, gets forwarded to someone you never spoke to, and they put your price next to two others. Without you in the room, price is the only thing they can compare.

What i do now is say yes, happy to, and in the same sentence ask for 20 minutes to go through it together. Same week. If they can't give you 20 minutes, they were never going to read 12 pages.

And keep it short. One page. Their problem in their own words, what you will do, the price, the next step. The nice design can wait.

How do you handle the "send me something" people? Tell me in the comments, i'm curious if someone found a better way.