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What to Do When Your Prospect Goes into Hiding

Written by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: How many times has this happened to you? You have a prospect that you've already spoken with and when it's time to follow up they don't take or return your phone calls. What's up with that?

What to Do When Your Prospect Goes into Hiding

How many times has this happened to you? You have a prospect that you've already spoken with and when it's time to follow up they don't take or return your phone calls. What's up with that?

What's up is a lack of compelling reasons for them to buy - now. You may have provided them with some compelling reasons, but those are yours, not theirs. You may believe they were interested and they might have been - before. But in order to assure that your prospect is able to maintain their interest from one meeting to the next, they must have one or more compelling reasons to buy what you have or you'll be in chase mode again.

What is a compelling reason? It's a motivator that creates urgency. Interest in your product or service, a feature, a bell or whistle is just that. Interest. But interest won't cause a prospect to open their checkbook or meet with you a second time. There must be something more compelling than interest.

Like what? Like the mounting cost of an unresolved problem. But make sure your prospect is the one who cares about that money. Someone may tell you about the money being lost but if it isn't their money it may only be a fact - not an ongoing painful reminder of the problem.

What else? Downtime can be a compelling reason, but only if your prospect is the one getting the calls from screaming customers threatening to take their business away if the problem doesn't get fixed.

Anything else? Fear is a great one. But be careful here too. There are several kinds of fear. The only one that is compelling is the fear of something bad happening. But even that isn't enough unless your prospect would be unable to cope with the consequences of that event.

Anything can be a compelling reason. The key, as stated previously, is that it must be compelling to your prospect. Identify the compelling reasons why they would by something, and even better, why they would buy from you, and you'll keep your prospect coming back for more.

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Article Tags: chase, checkbook, consequences, downtime, fear, money, motivator, painful reminder, second time, unresolved problem, urgency, whistle



Related Forum Posts
Re: Hiring introverts vs. extroverts - [quote="Evan":37xmbjab]It's generally hard to be a good salesperson if you are an introvert.[/quote:37xmbjab] Evan, I was thinking about the same right? Then I was put in charge of training sales teams and found out interesting traits among the successful ones. Often times, the extroverts talk "too much" and kill a sale. They attempt to overcome every objection by giving answers while NOT understanding they are not hearing true objections. When objections are answered but the buyers aren't proceeding for transaction, they're not telling you the real objection. When that happens, there is a psychological shift occurs that the more you appear needy to sell as a salesperon, the less attractive your sales team becomes because people like to be facilitated instead of being sold. So the hybrid of both characteristics will serve best in sales. The tone of your voice, posture, attitude, all work well... and you want to look confident, mature, calm and not attached to the end result of the transaction. It's like saying.... Mr. Prospect, I certainly would love to welcome you as a customer, but even if you don't proceed, it wouldn't be my loss... but saying this through your tone of voice, look on your face and everything else instead of in words. And some extroverts ones have hard time expressing these messages through unspoken communications, seeking approval for their answers to customers objections by speaking too much. Interesting isn't it? Warmest Regards, Takuya
Simple way to avoid Cold Calling - Gary, A chiropractor I work with hates cold calling (me too!) and he uses a technique to warm people up to using his services - it's so simple! In Sales your dealing with 3 pools of people: 1. Strangers 2. Prospects 3. Returning Customers You need to move people from one pool to the next. We'll concentrate on #1 and #2 as it's most relevant to your question. My Clients does the following (you just have to tailor it to your situation - be creative). My Client (we'll call him Bob) Bob leverages his time and resources to only get people that need his offer (pain relief) to put their hand up. Dealing with Strangers can get expensive and they don't like to be told what to do as they have no trust or relationship built with him. So to get Strangers to put their hands up he writes up an offer with a free report on a particular pain relief - let's say lower back pain (note: he can simply just change lower back pain to neck pain and have a new report). and uses multiple marketing vehicles to promote the Free report - magazines, newspaper, forums, postcards, private clinics etc. The only people picking up this information are the very people Bob would like as customers as they have Lower back pain. Bob's Free report ends with him stating his services and includes a Free in-house Consultation with no obligation. You'd be surprised at how easily Bob converts Strangers into Prospects. Note: They become prospects when they ask for the Free Guide and in exchange provide their contact details. This gives Bob unlimited opportunity to contact them for the Free in-house consultation with no obligation to continue using him. At this stage Bob's ability to close the sale lies in his office providing good customer service, Bob's ability to help the prospect and provide value at the free in-house consultation. Notice, he hasn't had to pick up the phone to COLD-CALL his Stranger pool or his Prospect pool. Hope that example helps to increase your prospecting!


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