The Deal I Turned Down

Issue 23 — June 24, 2026

A couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue was sitting in front of me. I turned it down.

At the time I was at tvONE, where I spent ten years before moving to Unilumin. The customer needed a command and control solution built around a large number of IP camera feeds.

The problem wasn't the opportunity. The problem was that I knew our IP protocol couldn't reliably support the application.

The visible decision looks like a sales decision. Take the deal or don't. It isn't. The real decision is whether you say "we're not the right fit" before the deal closes, when it costs you the deal, or after it closes, when it costs you the deal plus your reputation plus the client's time plus whatever it takes to unwind a project that was never going to work.

Saying yes to a deal you can't deliver doesn't make the gap between capability and promise disappear. It just moves the moment everyone finds out. And it moves it to the worst possible time, after the client has committed, after expectations are set, after the cost of being wrong has multiplied.

Turning down a couple hundred thousand dollars costs exactly what it sounds like. It's revenue you don't get, on a deal you were positioned to win. There's no version of that conversation that doesn't sting.

Taking the deal costs more, just not immediately. If the application doesn't work, you're now explaining to a client why the thing you sold them doesn't function. You're spending time and resources trying to make an unworkable approach workable. You're managing a relationship that started with a promise you couldn't keep. And the next time that client, or anyone they talk to, hears your name, this is the story.

There's also a quieter cost to saying no that's easy to miss. Walking away from a deal you're not equipped for is also a statement about what your company is for. It draws a line around your actual capability, which makes every deal you do take more credible, including to yourself.

Say no early, and say why. Not "we'll pass on this one," but "here's specifically what we can't do, and here's why that matters for this application." Clients remember specificity. It reads as competence, not as an excuse.

If you can point them somewhere, do it. Whether that's a referral to someone better suited, or just being straight that this application needs a different kind of solution than what your company builds, that costs you nothing and it's the difference between "we couldn't help" and "we wouldn't help."

Then let the deal go. Don't keep one foot in it, hoping it works out or hoping the client changes the requirements to fit what you can do.

I never found out how that project turned out. I know this: it never became a failed deployment attached to my name.

The easiest time to tell the truth about your capability is before the contract is signed. It's also the cheapest. After that, the bill keeps getting bigger.

If there's an opportunity in front of you right now that's bigger than your actual fit for it, name the specific gap out loud, to yourself first, then to whoever needs to hear it.

Decide well,
Chuck