Why Do Prospective Clients Ghost You?

By Jeff Beals

 Let’s say a prospective client contacts you, apparently very excited about your product or service. They want to meet with you immediately because “time is of the essence” or they want “to nail this down right away.” 

 Your meeting goes well. You hit it off with the prospect and start to build a relationship. The prospect is giving you a ton of buying cues, and you agree to draw up a detailed proposal. You promptly write the proposal and email it with a smile on your face and feeling of anticipation.

And then the crickets start chirping.

The client has gone dark, and despite your multiple emails and voicemails you can’t get them to acknowledge your existence.

In the dating world, they call it “ghosting.” That’s an appropriate term for the sales world too, because dark prospects seemingly disappear into the ether. This kind of behavior is very frustrating for sales professionals, and unfortunately, it's becoming more common. 

Have you ever wondered why prospects go dark? Why do people enthusiastically call you, meet with you and essentially lead you on, only to later ignore you?

There are several possibilities and most of them have little to do with you:

• They are super busy and overwhelmed
• They don’t have the same level of urgency as you do
• They are procrastinators
• They are not proactive communicators
• They are indecisive
• They have to get buy-in from other people/departments in their company
• They have various internal processes that must play out
• Their financial conditions may have changed suddenly
• They might be navigating internal politics
• They may have been using you for leverage with another vendor they like better than you.
• They are simply not interested and the thought of telling you is unpleasant especially if they have non-confrontational or avoidant personalities
• They are not interested, and because of a personality flaw, they don’t care enough about you to let you know. They are essentially sociopathic instead of empathetic.

Of all the possible reasons above, only the last three are truly negative. If it is any other reason, your prospect is likely still interested, and therefore, you should not give up on them.

That leads us to the next question, and it’s an obvious one. What should you do when a client goes dark on you? 

That’s an extremely important question but it’s too complex to be answered in one article. Therefore, I invite you so sign up for my next webinar which will give you detailed tactics you can use to deal with prospects who decide to ghost you. This will be well worth your time, because we’re going to go into a lot of detail and give you examples of things you can actually say to these prospects. 

It’s called “What to Do When Your Prospective Client Goes Dark,” and it takes place Thursday, August 27th at 1 p.m. Central. The investment of only $39 will show you how top-producing sales pros reengage prospects who have gone dark and successfully turn them into loyal customers. 

Click HERE to sign up!