So last week I was out of the office for a couple of days to spend some time with my family for spring break; during the time off, someone called in and spoke to another AM (account manager) here at LevelTen about their upcoming project.  The AM who spoke with him told him that generally our basic projects start at around $35,000 and the caller immediately said, “oh that’s more than we want to spend,” yet he continued to ask for a proposal.  The next day I received an email submission stating that the AM had promised him a proposal and that he hadn’t received it yet (less than 24 hours later).  At that point it was news to me, so I replied that I have to figure out who he spoke with and follow up with some more information.  Once I figured out who the AM was, we had a brief conversation about the call and he said that he’d never promised a proposal and that he was told that the price was out of their budget.  At that point we made the determination that we were not going to send a proposal, but simply inform the potential client that we didn’t feel that their project was a good match for us.  I was then told how unprofessional we were as a company and that the potential client would be letting everyone know.  Guess what, I'm letting everyone know too!

Here's the exchange of emails back and forth:

Potential Client: Chris - I'm going to assume your company does not want my business. I guess I will look into another firm. Thanks again.

Chris Sloan: Sorry I did speak with AM* and he didn't realize that you were under the impression he would be submitting a proposal.  That being said, I'm not sure that we'd be the right fit at this time, but I believe that we could refer you to some other vendors if you are  interested?  Let me know and I'll be glad to assist you.

Sincerely,

Chris Sloan

PC: "Not the right fit"? Are you kiddin me? What is that supposed to mean? So your denying me a proposal?

CS: Yes, at this time we will not be submitting a proposal.

Sincerely,

Chris Sloan

PC: I've never seen a more unprofessional firm. I will make sure to let my business contacts know.

I'm still trying to determine how declining to send a proposal makes me or us unprofessional: I speak to over 300 potential clients each month and of those we send proposals to about 3.  Many projects are either too small or just things we don't do well so there's no need to waste there or my teams time; and with most I offer to send them to some other great companies in DFW that can help them out and I gave this potential client the same option.  What do you think, was I being totally unprofessional?