What to Do When Prospects Ghost You

We’ve all been ghosted by someone, sometime, somewhere.?

And while it’s never pleasant, being ghosted in the context of getting bigger clients can particularly sting.

Calls aren’t returned.

Emails ignored.

All this from someone you may have met and shared quality time with.

To you, this person is (or was) more than a prospect.

In between discussing the exciting new potential project you can create together, you’ve shared holiday snaps, daiquiri recipes and relationship travails with them.

It was more than just dollars and cents.

Having said that, you could almost hear the champagne corks popping when you brought in your shiny new whale and with it a nice, juicy chunk of change.

As a result of your almost rock-solid relationship, you were about to smash this quarter’s budget!

Sigh.

The first step to dealing with being ghosted, is to figure out why it happened in the first place.?

There are three common reasons:

1. Bad timing: While the client herself seems invested, there could be other things going on.

Maybe their budget isn't as big as they thought, or their new boss thinks it's not the right time to push the go button. Or {insert any other excuse here}.

Most people don’t like confrontation or delivering bad news, so your potential client might have chosen the path of least resistance - silence - instead of saying "thanks but no thanks".

2. They're talking with your competitors: Customers sometimes feel awkward confessing that they're engaging with your competitors. Your BFF prospect may think you’re the ‘one’, but procurement or company policies could dictate that they need to speak to more than one potential new partner.

While it’s hard not to take this personally, don’t; this is the reality of dealing with larger clients in particular.

3. You didn’t read the room: Perhaps you thought your meeting/s went brilliantly, but your prospect didn’t feel the same way. Such are the vagaries of dealing with humans that, despite your wishful thinking, perhaps you were never in the game at all.?

Here are five proven ways to help you get things back on track and, if possible, land your whale:

Reflect and Refine:

Step back and reflect on your approach when faced with a prospect that’s gone to ground. This allows you to refine your strategy, and ensure that your next move is considered, professional and, essentially, the right one.

Finessing the Follow-Up:

Crafting the perfect follow-up is an art. You need to balance proactivity with a focus on moving the relationship forward in a non-pushy way.?

Repeating our earlier suggestion: don’t take it personally. Instead, be laser focused on developing lateral solutions that will help your prospect to achieve her objectives.?

Regularly sending insightful and relevant content is a low-risk, high-value approach that keeps you front of mind and reinforces the wisdom of working with you. Call after sending the content to see if they have any comments or thoughts.

And repeat.

Want the good news with this approach? In our experience, most of your competitors - who also get regularly ghosted - either quit immediately or do so after sending one or two cursory emails or leaving a few voicemails. Which leaves a big opening for you.

Never give up, showing up.

Go Multi-Channel:

You have several ways of creating quality touchpoints with your prospects: use them.?

Leverage email, phone calls, social media, F2F (where possible) and content marketing to create a comprehensive outreach strategy.?

One of our favourite initiatives is hosting regular webinars; the more vertical specific the better. There are few better ways for prospects to see the value you can add than for them to spend 45-60 minutes getting to know you.

Another benefit: webinars are still an under-used strategy for many companies, particularly smaller ones.?Again, it's a relatively open field for you.

Showcase Your Success:

Nothing speaks louder than your success stories. Particularly when you’ve been successful with other companies in your prospect’s vertical.

This is no time to go “aw shucks, it was nuthin!!!”. Helping other clients achieve their objectives really IS something. And you should tell the world about it!

Patience, grasshopper:

While we all want everything to happen yesterday, when you’re looking to land whales, patience is both a virtue and, usually, a necessity.

Balance persistence with patience along with incorporating the above tips, and you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve sooner, or later.

Now, are you ready to turn those ghostly prospects into loyal clients? We can help!

If you would like more specific strategies on how to get bigger clients and bigger budgets, book a free strategy session here .