Last week coincidentally two people reached out for help regarding the same challenge - ‘What to do when prospects are ghosting?’ One thing that can be very frustrating in sales is when your prospect ghosts and kills the momentum and excitement of the deal. Ghosting can happen at multiple stages of the sales funnel. As in the examples below, it can happen at the top of the funnel or the bottom of the funnel right when you think the person is ready to sign on the dotted line.
So the big question is how to handle ghosting?
I asked some of my friends in tech sales and compiled the tactics one can use to avoid ghosting. Despite all these tactics, prospects can still ghost you. In that case, the best thing to do is just move on and hand over that lead to the marketing team.
Top of the funnel
Why do “No shows” and “Ghosting” happen at the top of the funnel?
Usually, it is one of the reasons mentioned below:
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) misfit
Prospect forgot about the meeting or the previous meeting ran over time
Something accidentally popped up and needed your prospect’s immediate attention
Technology turned against your prospect (computer or phone line crashed)
Booked a meeting by mistake or testing your forms
(this list is by no means exhaustive)
We can tweak our tactics and fix the problem if it is one of the first four reasons. But no tactic will work to fix the problem if it is the last reason. I would say you shouldn’t even try to fix it if it is due to the last reason (5th one).
To map the leads to one of the above-discussed reasons you need to dig into the last 20 leads which are marked as a no-show in your CRM.
Run these 20 leads through the below checklist:
Source of the leads - it helps you understand where the lead is coming from. Example SEM, SEO, special marketing campaigns, etc.
Title of the person - is the person part of the leadership or an entry-level person or a random person in the organization
Geography - is the lead from your target segment or not?
Vertical - does the lead’s organization fall into your target vertical?
Email quality - is it a work email or personal email id
This checklist will help you validate the Lead-Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) fit. If you haven’t defined your Ideal Customer Profile, I strongly suggest you define it before doing the above-mentioned activity. Without defining your ICP the going through the checklist does not make sense.
If your no-shows are because of ICP misfit then share the feedback with the Marketing team. The marketing team will work on tweaking the message in the respective channels that are driving irrelevant leads.
If there is an ICP fit but still a no-show then check if it is one of the reasons among 2,3 and 4. If it is one among 2,3 and 4 reasons, then build an email sequence to re-engage these leads and reschedule the meeting. One tactic that helped me avoid no-shows because some forgot about the meeting is sending an upcoming meeting reminder email 2hours before the meeting time. This simple tactic has helped me avoid more than 50% of ‘No-shows.’
If there is an ICP fit but still a no-show and the reasons are not among 2,3 and 4 then you need to look at your ICP hypothesis and rework on defining a better ICP.
Bottom of the funnel
You read it right! Sometimes, people ghost you right before signing the agreement after expressing a strong desire to start the project. You might be thinking ‘they are crazy.’
But NO! The prospect is not crazy, something has changed at their end. Usually, it could be one of three reasons:
They realized that they are ill-informed
They are constrained
They have other interests
Sometimes, right after showing all the excitement to sign the partnership the prospect might get new information from some other source and realize that she/he is operating with incomplete information. For example, in one of my deals, a prospect accidentally got in touch with a customer of ours at the conference and learned that we were operating with a differential pricing model. After a couple of follow-ups, I uncovered this reason and shared all the information to rationalize the differential pricing. After sharing all the information and displaying transparency we signed the partnership.
In most of the cases, the prospect realizes during the agreement signing process that there are constraints within the organization that she/he is unaware of. The prospect might not be aware of the legal constraints or the procurement process, or the boss might have just pulled a ‘No budget’ string. Suddenly, this prospect lost the power to close the deal and is embarrassed to share the reason. So she/he ends up avoiding your emails.
In some of the cases, the prospect has other interests. The presence of these hidden interests isn’t as rare as you might think. It is quite commonplace. For example, your prospect might be waiting for a hike and do not want to show an increase in the expenses of his or her project. So the agreement signing is stalled.
It is important to uncover the hidden reasons and offer information to overcome the objections. One email tactic that always works -
‘Have you given up on the project?’
This is a tactic I picked from the book ‘Never split the difference’ by Chris Voss. It works like magic and helps you get around ghosting.
Avoid ghosting and go close that deal! Good luck for August!
SeSaMint for your first Job
Unfortunately, no B-school or University has a course for SaaS Sales. I know because you actually searched platforms like Lamda School, UpGrad and more across the Internet etc but even they don’t have any courses.
I started the SeSaMint project to help founders and aspiring salespeople sell SaaS. As part of the project, I spoke to 15 global SaaS leaders, referred to some of the best books, spoke to 40+ founders, and reflected on all my learnings in the last 6 years. This book is distilled from all of that, packaged in an easy to read format, filled with immediately actionable takeaways that get results.
SeSaMint - Guide to Selling SaaS is available online. I’m offering a 50% discount on my book today Here’s the link to grab the discounted copy: SeSaMint Guide to Selling SaaS - First Job.
Go get that Job! Close that Deal!