A prospect once asked me to put a hard number on what he'd get back from working with me. I had a real number in my head, from an ROI exercise I'd just run for another client. I didn't give it to him.

Here's why. An ROI isn't something a marketer produces. It's something a market decides. If people want or need what you're selling, the numbers happen. If they don't, no amount of strategy, positioning, or spend will manufacture demand that isn't there. My job is to make sure the right people hear about the right offer in the right way. Whether they actually want it is not a variable I control, and it's usually the biggest variable in the whole equation

Why the guarantee is the tell

Anyone who guarantees you a number is either guaranteeing demand for your product, which they have no way to do, or they're planning to hit the number some other way, inflated leads, vanity metrics, whatever gets the report to say what was promised. Neither one is what you're actually paying for.

I told the guy the truth: I can't guarantee an ROI, and anyone who does is lying to you. He didn't hire me. Fine. I'd rather lose the deal than sell someone a number I don't control.

What I can actually promise

Positioning that's clear. An offer that makes sense. A system that gets the right people to the right message. That's the part that's mine. Whether the market says yes is the part that was never anyone's to guarantee, no matter how confident the pitch sounds.