A Spaghetti Session is Digital Sandwich’s required first step for any new client. It’s part audit, part interview, and it happens before we ever propose a single tactic or send you a price.
If you’ve talked to us and heard the phrase, or seen it on our homepage and wondered what you’re actually signing up for, keep reading for a breakdown of exactly what happens and why we don’t skip it.
Key Takeaways
- A Spaghetti Session combines an in-depth audit of your current marketing and sales assets with a live interview.
- Before the interview even happens, we’ve already researched your company, your competitors, your voice of customer data, and your ICP archetypes.
- The session exists to fill in the gaps that research alone can’t answer.
- It ends with a “perfect world proposal”: a full strategy with no price attached.
- You don’t get a quote until you tell us what you want priced. We don’t lead with a sales pitch.
- This is not optional for new clients. It’s how the relationship starts, every time.
Why We Start Here Instead of With a Proposal
Most agencies ask what you want, quote a price, and get to work. We think that’s backwards.
Before we ever recommend a single tactic, we need to understand what’s actually happening inside your business, not just what you tell us is happening. That means we’re auditing your current assets and assessing what’s working and what isn’t, before we form an opinion about what to do next.
We also do this because we don’t believe in guessing. If we recommend something without knowing your data, your customers, and your competitive landscape first, we’re just another agency pitching a template. The Spaghetti Session is how we make sure that doesn’t happen.
What Actually Happens in a Spaghetti Session
By the time you sit down for the interview part of the session, we’ve already done a lot of the legwork.
The interview itself exists to fill in whatever that research couldn’t answer. It’s not a generic intake form. It’s a conversation built to surface the specifics that only someone inside your business would know.
We build out those ICP archetypes for two reasons.
First, they shape how we talk to your audience across your website, ads, and campaigns.
Second, we use them to test messaging and creative internally before we ever spend a dollar of your money on media.
This same testing philosophy shows up anywhere we talk about adding traffic, since we never recommend spending before we’ve confirmed the audience is right.
The Perfect World Proposal: What You Get Afterward
Once the session wraps, we don’t send you an invoice. We send you what we call a perfect world proposal: the full strategy, every recommendation we think makes sense for your business, with no numbers attached.
From there, the conversation shifts. Most clients come back and say something like, “There are three or four things on this list we don’t have the capability to do in-house. What would it cost for you to do them?”
That’s the moment we finally talk price, and only for the specific pieces you’ve asked us to handle. It’s a different order of operations than most agencies use, and it’s intentional. You’re not buying a pitch. You’re responding to a plan you’ve already seen in full.
This maps directly to how we structure ongoing work too. Depending on what you need, that could mean Full Plate Marketing, where we take on the whole strategy, or a more targeted arrangement.
Common Questions
How long does a Spaghetti Session take?
Most sessions run as a single in-depth interview, typically 60 to 90 minutes, but the research that happens beforehand takes longer. Expect the full process, from initial research through the perfect world proposal, to take one to two weeks depending on how much data is available on your business.
Does a Spaghetti Session cost anything?
No. The session, the research behind it, and the perfect world proposal that follows are all part of how we qualify and understand new clients. You won’t be asked for payment until you’ve seen the full plan and told us specifically what you’d like us to execute.
What if we don’t move forward after the session?
That happens, and it’s fine. Not every business is a fit for how we work, and we’d rather find that out during a free session than three months into a contract. You’ll still walk away with a real strategic assessment of your marketing, whether you hire us or not.
Is the Spaghetti Session required, or can we skip straight to a proposal?
It’s required. Every client relationship with Digital Sandwich starts here, regardless of budget or how well you think you already know what you need. As we tell prospects directly, it’s not really up for debate; it’s simply how we work. We’ve found that skipping it leads to recommendations built on assumptions instead of data.
Ready to Find Out What’s Actually Going On in Your Marketing?
A Spaghetti Session is the fastest way to get an honest, research-backed picture of your current marketing and sales alignment, with no cost and no obligation attached. If you’re ready to see what a real audit turns up, book a Spaghetti Session and let’s find out what’s actually working.
