Why Your Prospects Won’t Call You Back (Stop Ghosting)

Rob  00:00

Sometimes prospects call you back, and sometimes they don’t. Why? What’s the difference between when they do and when they don’t? We’re gonna get into that in this episode.

Rob  00:13

A while back, I had somebody ask me the question. This person I’m trying to get a hold of, they’re just not calling me back. I’ve not got any response. I don’t know why, and it made me wonder why they were not getting any response when before they were, or were they ever getting responses that they thought they should be getting, or were they just getting led along.

Rob  00:32

And so, let’s get into a little bit of why things happen, and why people may not be calling you back if that’s the case. So, first of all, the question I would ask, is are you in front of the right decision maker.

Rob  00:43

You may think you’re in front of the right person, but remember, sometimes the person that you’re in front of has the right to say no, but they may not have the right to say yes, there’s a, there’s a stark difference between those two, right, so if somebody has the right to say yes, then you’re probably in front of the right decision maker, if they don’t, or you’re not sure. Let’s find out. Let’s ask some questions.

Rob  01:03

Getting in front of all the decision makers is also a very important component of it. If you don’t get in front of the right people and all of the right people, then you’re not going to be able to get a decision or a call back when you need to.

Rob  01:16

So think about it this way, if three people need to make a decision in order to do anything, and that means usually that means something like this: you’ve got somebody that’s running a project, they’re the ones trying to work through the sales with you, but on their team, or part of their team, is somebody that deals with the finance component of it.

Rob  01:32

One of the person deals with maybe the operational piece of that, or some other component that fits together, but you just don’t know it, or don’t see it, when that happens, you have to remember that all of those individuals who are a part of that decision should all be together at one point in time, or at least have the conversation with you all at the same time, because when you do that, you’re then eliminating the problem of, oh, well, I got to check with so and so, I got to deal with that, you’re not going to have that, they’re all going to be in there.

Rob  02:02

They’re all going to be in the same room. They’re all going to make the decision together, because they’re the right people. There’s no blaming of another person that’s not there. There’s none of that kind of stuff. So, just remember, you got to have all the decision makers in the room at the same time.

Rob  02:14

My next question would be, why did you email your proposal or your estimate to them? Why did you do that, and so I’m saying that to you, because I’m guessing that at some point you’ve probably emailed somebody in an estimate or a proposal and said here you go, and then you never hear anything back, and that usually means that you didn’t do something correctly, one of which is you emailed the proposal to them, and then you left it to them to get back to you when they felt like it, and if they don’t feel like it, or they don’t want to, they’re not gonna, and you’re never gonna know why.

Rob  02:46

So, one of these I would always recommend is, instead of just sending an estimate or a proposal, I would always schedule a time, sit down with them, whether that’s sit down in person or online. What you’re gonna wanna do is, you’re gonna wanna go through the estimate in a little bit of detail, make sure you understand their questions, they understand the pieces that you’re trying to make or points across, and make sure that there’s a two-way conversation.

Rob  03:07

So, when there’s a part of the estimate that has a problem, typically you’re bringing that up and you’re talking through that and asking them any, any part of that is a problem or a question that you have, or anything that that sounds like that’s not quite what we talked about before, and typically what that does is it eliminates the problem of we didn’t talk about that, we didn’t know that, we didn’t do any of that stuff.

Rob  03:27

It just eliminates that problem, and also the other thing is when you’re doing that is you want to make sure that when you’re going through the estimate you go through the whole thing, and then when you finish, you’re saying okay, we’re looking for a yes or a no answer, right?

Rob  03:40

So in the beginning of the meeting, you’re saying that because we’ve talked about that before, you should always ask for a decision at some point, whether it’s a no or a yes. It’s okay, it’s not okay for a think it over, and if you do that, and then you get to the end of your estimate review, and you go through that, you say, and remember, well, we’re going to talk about this, we’re going to go through this, and then when we get to the end, it’s going to be a yes or a no, or it’s going to be we’re going to decide on the next steps, whatever that might be.

Rob  04:02

But it’s not going to be a think it over, right? And by doing that, you’re then narrowing the directions that it can go into. When you think about it that way, when you email it out, you’re never going to have that closure in terms of it’s either going to be a yes or a no. When you review it together, in person or online, usually what ends up happening is you have some sort of closure.

Rob  04:23

It’s either yes or it’s a no, or it’s a okay, we need to do this, this, this, but on this date we’re going to reconvene, and we’re going to make a decision. Then that’s okay too. At least you know your deadlines, your timelines, you know when things are going to happen. There’s no mystery, and they’ll show up because they said they will.

Rob  04:42

So, those rules of engagement are really critical, and I know I talked about that in a previous episode, but it’s really important to have that conversation about, is this going to be a yes or a no answer?

Rob  04:52

Because if you don’t have that conversation, you’re playing on their timeline and their objectives, which is not to give you any information. Conversation, not to give you an answer, a yes or no. Only tell you yes when they’re ready, and when they want to say yes. And if they’re going to say no, they’re just going to disappear. That’s their rules, that’s what they play by, and that’s not what you want to be playing by.

Rob  05:11

Another thing that you can do, if you’re getting this point where people are not calling you back, and you’ve had some conversations, one of these you might have to do is start to interject into your conversations ballpark range numbers, so as long as you’re getting enough pain, enough questions answered about the reasons why they would do this work with you.

 

Rob  05:28

As long as you’re getting enough of that, you should be able to give them ballpark figures, and so usually I try to give them three ballpark figures. Sometimes it’s two, or sometimes it’s one, depending on the cover, how the conversation goes, and when I do that, the bottom number is always going to be the lowest I would take for that amount.

 

Rob  05:45

That’s going to be the number one rule, and number two is make them choose which of those ballparks that they’re comfortable with. And when you do that, there’s less likely to be this feeling of we don’t know what we want to do, or there’s just going to disappear on you, because you’ve talked about some numbers, because when you have that conversation with numbers, you’re going to start to get a feel of, yeah, they didn’t seem to like that number.

Rob  06:07

They didn’t feel like they were ready to go with that, or they didn’t like those numbers at all, because you can, you can tell in that conversation those numbers are out of the range, and when I’ve had that conversation with somebody and they say, yeah, boy, that’s a little bit different than they expected. Is it higher or lower than you expected?

Rob  06:24

That’s one question, but the other question is, is what were you expecting? Because when you say, what was your, what were you expecting, they’re going to come back with some numbers and some ranges of their own, and you’ll have to make some decisions. Is that something you can live with or not?

Rob  06:36

Typically not, but sometimes it’s not far off, and so if they come back with a little bit lower range, what you can say is, okay, we can get to that range, but we’d have to take these three things out, and a lot of times people don’t like things taken away from them, but sometimes they’re saying, hey, this is the range, this is the range, I’ll do it, and then you’ve got at least less work with a more comparable price, right?

 

Rob  06:59

One of the things that I feel like some people have confusion about a little bit sometimes is when is the right time to ask for a decision. Asking for a decision is happening all the way through this process, right? You’re asking, is it okay to do this, is it okay to do that? You’re asking if it’s okay to move to the next step.

Rob  07:14

You’re confirming something, that decision’s always happening, but what you’re trying to make sure is, is you, that you know where they’re standing, what they’re thinking, and why they’re feeling that way, and you can start to apply some pain numbers or some pain pieces to those decisions.

Rob  07:29

That’s really when you know you’re heading in the right direction, because if you’re getting pain attached to decisions, you know you’re heading in the right direction. Another thing I like to, I guess, joke a little bit about is, is that there’s a piece of hope that you think you’re going to get this job, right, and so you’re reaching out to this person, hoping you’re going to get this job, because it’s maybe one you want, more likely is one you need, right, and so when that happens, that’s something that’s what I like to call hopium.

Rob  07:56

And when you’re smoking the hopium, you’re running into a little bit of a problem there, because hopium is a deadly drug, and you don’t want to be on hopium. It’s never where you think it’s going to go, and it’s not something you want to have in your vocabulary. You do not want to have hope.

Rob  08:10

What you want to have is some clear understandings of what next steps are, where they’re at in the process, what their pains are, how they affect them, those pains, how they affect them themselves personally, as well as the business, as well as other people, their processes, their profitability. How does all that tie in? How do those numbers affect everything? That’s when you know you’re heading in the right direction, and you’re not smoking the whole deal. That’s the key.

Rob  08:37

And lastly, I think, is are you operating in an area that you can control, so what I mean by that is, is there are only so many things you can control. I can’t control if somebody’s going to make a decision of yes or no. What I can control is I have the conversation with them that says the decision at the end of this conversation is going to be yes or a no.

Rob  08:55

We’re not looking for a maybe, because maybe usually means no. Okay, that I can control. They don’t have to follow that rule. I can’t control if they say I’m not making a decision today, I’m never making a decision. I can’t control that, but when they do that, I can then push back and say that sounds like you’re not making a decision, and that sounds like a no to me, that sounds like you’re making a decision.

Rob  09:16

So know that you only work on and focus on the things that you can control that includes having the meetings, having the conversations, asking the pain questions, making sure all the right decision makers are involved, all of the pieces that go into building a good sale. Those are the things that you can control. If you can control it, those are the things you need to do.

Rob  09:38

You can’t control if somebody doesn’t show up for a meeting, you just can’t, but you can control whether or not you confirm that meeting, that you know when that meeting is going to be, and they’ve said yes, and they’re going to be there. If they don’t make it, they don’t make it. It happens, get over it, move on, right? Or reach out

Rob  09:54

Hey, did you want to reschedule, or was that a no doubt? That’s okay. Always push to get rid of somebody. Be out of your pipeline, because the more that you push them out of your pipeline, the more they want to stay in the pipeline.

Rob  10:05

If you found any of this helpful, make sure that you like and subscribe, because there’s gonna be more content just like this in the future. And again, remember, slow down and close, you.