How To Handle Prospects Who Give You The Silent Treatment

If you have been in sales and marketing for any length of time you have most likely had a prospect or two drop off your radar and give you the silent treatment.

One of my colleagues described this prospect behavior very well:

I just don’t know what to do whe I get the silent treatment, like, when I have spent a lot of time working with a prospect, with productive conversations and everything, and they say they’re interest in our solution and look like they’re ready to commit. Then, Bam! Suddenly everything comes to a halt.

I’ll try to call them a couple of times, and send a followup email to two, but they don’t respond. It’s like they just disappeared. I just assume I lost the sale without knowing what went wrong, or how to proceed. This kind of thing makes sales feel like an grueling and painful process.

You might feel confused and a little anxious when this happens to you. You might feel like it’s not you who did anything wrong, that you put a lot into the relationship. Then you’ll wonder how in the world are you going to save the sale if the prospect isn’t even talking to you.

Hopeium trap

There is a low pressure way to reconnect with your prospect after the become silent. However, you need to understand how this situation came to be to begin with.

Most salespeople get caught up in hopeium, an expression meaning we focus our hopes on closing the sale. Unfortunately, hopeium can become a trap. Because when you’re under the influence of hopeium it becomes impossible to stay focused on the most important goal, that is to know your prospect’s truth.

Once we set our minds on the outcome of closing the sale, we start to anticipate how the sales process will go, then we start to expect things to happen the way we think they will. And we do this automatically without even thinking about it.

What happens if we are under the influence of hopeium, and are focused on closing the sale when the prospect abruptly ceases all communications. Typically, we will feel a combination of anxiety, frustration, a sense of loss, discouragement, and confusion. We get preoccupied with what went wrong.

There may even be feelings of betrayal.

How to clear up the mystery

By letting go of your agenda and taking the time to learn where you really stand with you prospect, and accepting whatever that truth may be.

If you try to reconnect with the prospect while you are still hoping to close the sale you are going to unnecessarily introduce sales pressure to the relationship. Pushing you prospect away and ruining any trust you may have established. Eliminate that sales pressure by letting your prospect know you are okay with their decision to not move forward.

Put another way, take a step back and don’t try to chase the sale or do follow up calls because you are still focused on getting to yes.

Bottom line

If your getting the silent treatment from one of your prospects, it only means you don’t know their truth yet. It does not necessarily mean you have lost the sale.

Four reasons the truth is important

1. You will regain your confidence is selling. Without the truth we start to blame ourselves. We become unsure of where we are with the prospect. We begin to think negatively about ourselves and lay on the self-blame. We get overly anxious wondering it the sale will close somehow.
2. Your sales efficiency will increase and your level of stress will decrease. After you figure out the truth about your prospect you will be able to make an informed decision about staying involved with them or moving on. Often a “no” is nearly as valuable as a “yes” because a “no” can free up your time to find prospects who are a better fit for you. This increases you efficiency by cutting out prospects that you cannot close on. You can walk away without the guilt.
3. Prospects are pushed away by sales pressure. Responding to the silent treatment with calls or email is telling them you are determined to close the sale. That means you are looking out for yourself not your prospect’s. Leading them to mistrust you.
4. Completely breaking off all communication, the silent treatment, is the prospect’s way of protecting themselves from sales pressure when they are not comfortable revealing their truth. The harder we press, the more the clam up and avoid us.  The opposite is also true. The more relaxed we are and inviting of the truth, the more upfront the prospect will be with us. They will feel alright sharing their information with us when they know we are open to hearing it.

How to restart communications

After my colleague and I talked over these issues he said, “This makes sense, but I don’t know what to say when I call them”.

It might be simpler than you think.

• First, just call your prospect. Voicemail and email are not very personal and should only be used after several attempts to connect with a phone call.
• Second, take ownership and apologize for causing the situation in the first place.

Your conversation could go something like this:

Hi, Sam, this is Ben. First off, I just wanted to apologize that we ended up not being able to connect. I feel like I dropped the ball, or failed to give you the information you need. I’m not calling to keep things moving. I assume you went ahead with different company, and that’s alright. But I am interested in getting some feedback so I can improve for next time.

The results for responding this way will probably surprise you. Your prospect may have a legitimate reason for not getting back to you.

Just remember, you didn’t lose the sale, you just don’t know your prospects truth yet.

Further reading

• Relationship Selling
• Customer Prospecting
• Difficult Customer Behaviors

How I Failed With A Home Based Business, And You Don’t Have To

Do you want to run and operate a home based, or work from home, business? Do you think you have what it takes to run a business?

This is how I failed and my first home based business, learn from my mistakes.

There are seemingly countless home based business opportunities out there, both on and off the internet. You have the options of starting something on your own from scratch, or ordering a turn-key system from someone.

My problem was I got so excited about the possibilities that I didn’t focus enough on the details. All I saw was how much money I could make and little else. Deep down I knew I wouldn’t like doing the work required to succeed in the my work from home business. I kept thinking about the money I could make and told myself I could things I wasn’t comfortable with to become rich.

Basically, I failed because I had set unrealistic expectations for myself. I dreamed of quitting my day job and becoming my own boss. Then I came across one of those opportunities that seemed to good to be true, and it was. Don’t read into that. It was a legitimate opportunity and many people were being successful at it.

The problem is person-to-person sales makes me uncomfortable and this opportunity required exactly that. It required me to advertise and promote my business, and make numerous calls to grow my down line and sell products.

I spent an awful lot of money on advertising. The advertising got results too. But then I had to call each person who responded and try to close the sale. These calls would make me so uncomfortable that after spending several hours on the phone I was so stressed out that I wasn’t able to relax. It even got to the point that I wasn’t sleeping well at night. It got to the point where I just stopped making calls and all that advertising was a giant loss because I wasn’t able to follow up on my leads.

So you can see, it’s important to choose a business opportunity that is right for you, not because other people are making money with it. Focus on building a business that is right for you and the money will come.

Four guidelines for success

1. Be realistic about the business opportunity. If you will be required to do what you are not comfortable with you will not succeed.
2. Ignore the profit potential and choose something you will enjoy doing, because if you don’t like the business activity you will not succeed.
3. We can’t all succeed at the same thing. Just because someone is making $2000 or more a week does not mean you will. Different people can do different things well. Recognize your personal potential and stay within it.
4. Develop a budget for your home based business and stick to it. Never let someone talk you into spending more than you can afford, including yourself!

Further Reading

• Small Business Financial Management
• How to Choose a Home Based Business
• MLM Strategies
• How to Sell Face to Face Survival Guide

Zip Code Phonebook Yellow Pages

A California-based research company has been extensively doing studies on U.S. ZIP (Zone Improvement Program) Codes, they can now predict, with certain percentage of accuracy, what you ate for breakfast based on your zip code.

Zip Code is the smallest, most organized accumulation of information by which we can evaluate the demographic flavor of a given area.

From a marketing standpoint, most retail businesses use zip code along with the Pareto Principle that 80% of your customers reside within the zip codes that connect to your location. In theory, they live no more than 7 miles from where you are.

A CHANGING MARKETPLACE

The phonebook we have grown accustomed to was developed over 30 years ago. Only it has grown in terms of thickness, weight, and aesthetic design.

From a marketing perspective, except for its dominance and near monopoly, it has been rendered useless by a more mobile and more efficient market.

When the Yellow Pages was first introduced, the world “malls”, “strip malls”, “executive centers”, and “postal & mail box centers” were unknown to American consumers.

Today, it is easier for us to dial directory assistance or look online than it is to use the phonebook.

USE OLD PATTERNS

To make it easy for advertisers and consumers to swallow something new, make it look like it’s old. So, use simple patterns and designs borrowed from old phonebooks, including rates charged for your territory.

Establish your advertising rates based on the number of homes and businesses your Zip Code phonebook is going into.

You can cover as many Zip Codes as you want, just make sure you do not pile up a marketplace so large you are practically competing with the phone company. The best rule of thumb is to break the phone company’s general distribution area into 7 phonebooks.

GTE used to have what they called “The Neighborhood Phonebook”. I think the reason it died is that it broke down its neighborhood either very conceptually or too similar to the way all other phonebooks do. Advertisers want solid numbers. Zip Codes are solid. Just ask the postal service.