Rocket Fuel - How to deal with ghosting
You may be a business owner that is doing the selling yourself, or you may be in an internal or external role within a company. This tip is for you, and this week, I'm going to talk about ghosting.
Hi everybody, Julie here, The Sales Ace, bringing you a sales tip for all of you individuals out there that are in front line selling roles.
You may be a business owner that is doing the selling yourself, or you may be in an internal or external role within a company. This tip is for you, and this week, I'm going to talk about ghosting.
Now, what I mean about ghosting is the action that clients will take once you’ve sent a quote and you then try and follow it up. It's an absolute pain and it can obviously really break down the sales process and have a detrimental effect on your pipelines. So, this little tip is something that I implemented for a number of clients that I do consultancy work with and it works a treat. Here it is:
Once you've had the conversation about the quote and you're ready to go away and pull that together for the client then the last thing that we need to be saying is “right, what we need to do is put a date in the diary that I can give you a call and have a chat with you about the quote.”
Let's secure that down and get that in the diary so that there's a commitment from the customer. Now, I wouldn't leave that too long. I would certainly give that about 2 or 3 days, about 48 hours after you actually send the quote across.
Now, this does help, it helps the customer know that you're calling and it also helps obviously speed along the pipeline.
There's one measure extra that you can take, and this is not to send the quote until the actual day of the conversation. So it gives you then an opportunity to have that initial conversation with the customer and go through the quote, live online with them. The only downside on that is that they may want to think about things, and then again, if that is the case, you can put another time in the diary to follow up. But it's always about making sure that you've got a date in the diary to have that conversation with the customer. They know you're calling, and though it doesn't stop ghosting, it certainly dramatically reduces them not picking up the phone because they're busy or whatever.
So try it. Try it and see, see how that works for you within your businesses and do let me know how you get on with that.
And don't forget if there's anything that you want me to discuss in our sales tips, any things that you're finding tricky or challenging within the sales process, then please email me.
My email address is julie@thesalesace.co.uk.
So that's it for this week, and I'll catch up with you soon!
