Failure Library · stalled deal
The client ghosted after the proposal. The proposal may be where the deal became visible — not where it broke.
Most teams respond with another check-in, more information or a deadline. That adds seller activity. It does not tell you what buyer commitment disappeared.
What to inspect first
Find the last meaningful buyer-owned action before the proposal. Did the buyer introduce a stakeholder, accept an action with an owner and date, start internal approval, or commit budget/resources? If the strongest action was “send me a proposal,” the deal may have been advanced on seller output rather than buyer movement.
The control question
What buyer action would have to exist for this deal to deserve the stage we are reporting?
Decision rule
If there is no mapped decision path, no buyer-owned next step and no real decision access, do not solve silence with cadence. Move the deal back to the last stage the evidence supports, then ask for the missing buyer action directly.
Apply this to the live deal