How to Respond When Clients Don’t “Get It”

The other day, a client of Hyperspace and fellow founding CEO asked me a great question: “What do you do when a potential client doesn’t see your value?”

We’ve all been there — you're pitching your heart out, laying out everything you can do, and suddenly their eyes glaze over. You’ve lost them. The deal’s gone.

Here’s what I’ve learned: Before you try to “win them back,” pause and ask one essential question—Is this my ideal client?

And I don’t mean someone with deep pockets and low expectations. I mean: Is this the type of person or company you built your business to serve?

If not, stop chasing. Be polite. Move on.

Especially for young companies, a common mistake we see is businesses trying to sell to “everyone.” Hey, it works for Walmart (the largest private employer in the US). But more often this strategy leads to mediocre outcomes.

Most businesses do far better by focusing on a specific group that they understand deeply and can deliver massive value to.

At Hyperspace, one of the traits we look for in our ideal client is Founding CEOs who are ambitious for good. If you’re a client reading this, you know in your bones what that means. It means that every titan of business around us today was once just an idea in the mind of a crazy founder. And it means that there is more to life than how many decimal places are in your bank account balance. 

Established companies, family offices, nonprofits - our services could be useful to all of them, yet we don’t pursue any of them to become our clients. Why? Because we aren’t built to serve them. And we don’t pretend that we are. We are specifically built to serve startups and scaling small businesses. That is who we understand deeply and can deliver massive value for. 

If I’m talking to a potential client and they don’t light up when I describe what we do, I check in with myself: Are they our kind of person?

If not, no problem. Adjust, wrap up, move on.

But if the answer is “yes,” then I dig in:

• What do they care about?

• How do I reframe my message to speak their language?

• What can I show, not just say?

• What am I missing about their goals or fears?

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Ultimately, it’s not their job to see our value. It’s our job to communicate it.

Often, the best way to do that is to stop talking and listen.