Your contact is about to present your work in a meeting you will not attend, so your job is to make her case easy to carry. Give her the problem in her own words, the outcome in one line, the number, and the smallest next step. Then ask to be in the room.
Write the half-page your contact can forward without editing, then ask whether a short call with her boss would help.
Your contact is presenting your work from memory in a meeting you cannot attend, so what she carries decides the outcome.
Ask your contact what question her boss is most likely to raise, then answer it in writing.
Your client has a client.
Leah Neaderthal, Smart Gets Paid
Your contact needs a case she can carry from memory, plus one document she can forward without editing it. She is going to describe your work in a few minutes, to somebody with other priorities, without you there to fill gaps.
What to give her:
I teach a lightweight version of this handoff as a Proposal in an Email, a named piece of the Academy curriculum. What matters here is the constraint rather than the format: if a document only makes sense with you narrating it, it will be presented by somebody who cannot narrate it.
Get in front of the approver by asking your contact whether a short conversation with her boss would help, and frame it around saving everybody a round trip. The request is smaller than it feels from your side.
Flynn and Lake found that people underestimated by as much as 50% the likelihood that others would agree to a direct request for help, because the person asking focuses on the burden and discounts how uncomfortable it is to refuse. Your contact wants this approved. Fifteen minutes that answers her boss's questions directly is help, not an imposition.
"Would it help if I joined for ten minutes to answer questions, or would you rather I gave you something to bring in?" Two options, both fine, and she stays in control of her own relationship. Going around a contact costs you the only person advocating for you, and asking plainly is less imposing than it feels.
Ask what her boss will want to know, then answer it in writing. A contact who cannot get you in the room can almost always tell you what the room will ask.
Repeated waiting-on-approval usually means the internal conversation has not happened yet, rather than that it happened and went badly. Meetings get rescheduled, priorities move, and the thing that never gets scheduled is the thing nobody is chasing.
Useful questions, and each is gentler than a status request:
I teach this as it's never about you. A hundred things could be causing this, and at most one of them involves you. Meanwhile, keep the rest of your business moving, because a single opportunity carrying your whole quarter changes how you show up in exactly the wrong way.
Offering something smaller works when the obstacle is the size of the commitment rather than the value of the work. A smaller first piece often clears an approval threshold that a full engagement cannot.
Where it helps and where it does not:
| Situation | Smaller first piece |
|---|---|
| The number needs sign-off higher than your contact | Helps. It may sit under her own authority |
| The boss is unconvinced the problem is real | Does not help. Solve the belief first |
| Budget arrives next quarter | Helps. It keeps things moving and holds the relationship |
| Your contact cannot articulate the value | Does not help. Fix the handoff instead |
I teach the offer version of this as an ETSY offer, short for Easy To Say Yes, and there is more to the decision than the size of the number. The test is whether shrinking the ask removes the actual obstacle, or just makes your work cheaper.
Here is what I want you to notice about this moment: your contact has stopped being the person you are selling to and become the person selling for you. That is a promotion for her and a change of job for you.
Most consultants keep selling to the contact who is already sold. They send more detail, more credentials, another case study, and none of it helps, because the person who needed convincing was convinced weeks ago. What she needs is a case she can carry into a room you are not in, in language that will survive being repeated by somebody who does not do your work for a living.
And be kind about her position. She is navigating her own system, with her own boss, her own competing priorities, and her own risk in advocating for an outsider. Clients can use an ally. If you are the person who makes her look prepared in that meeting, you have done something more valuable than any case study.
One more thing, because it costs people real money: do not read a slow approval as a soft no. Approvals are slow because approvals are slow.
Emailing the boss without your contact's agreement is the one move that reliably costs you the engagement, because it tells your advocate she cannot control her own relationship. Ask her first. If she offers to make the introduction, take it. If she prefers to carry it herself, give her what she needs and let her.
A no from an approver is worth understanding rather than accepting immediately. Ask your contact what the objection was, because it is often about timing, budget cycles or a competing initiative rather than about your work. Those are all things that change. Ask when it would make sense to revisit, and put a real date on it.
Every two to three weeks, with something useful attached each time, works for most approval cycles. The interval matters less than the content: a note that gives your contact something to use is welcome at almost any frequency, and a note that only asks for status wears out fast. Match the rhythm to their cycle if you know it.
A short video or deck helps when your contact asks for one, and adds friction when she does not. Anything you send has to be something she is willing to put her name on in front of her boss. Ask what format their organization already uses, then send that rather than the thing you would prefer to make.