You’ve had an initial discovery call with a potential customer, you thought it went well — after all they didn’t say they weren’t interested — but now it’s been a week or two and you haven’t heard anything. What do you do?
This scenario happens all the time. No matter what you sell, “Buyer stopped responding” is one of the top closed lost reasons across startups, especially in the early stages of any sales process.
There are multiple reasons why a buyer stops responding after an initial call:
They just wanted information that wasn’t available on your website.
They had an objection that they didn’t share with you.
They weren’t serious about making a change yet.
They found an alternative solution.
Their responsibilities changed.
Their priorities changed.
Their job changed.
Clearly these reasons all have different root causes, yet most sellers default to using the same approach to address all of them. Something like this:
“Just following up as I haven’t heard back from you.”
“Bumping this to the top of your email.”
“Sorry to keep bothering you.”
“Following up again.”
“Re: _____”
While persistence is a vital quality in sales, in this case its fruitless without diagnosis. You first need to understand why your buyer stopped responding before you can figure out how to re-engage them. This post lays out the steps to doing that, covering:
How to diagnose why your buyer has stopped responding
How to choose the right approach to re-engage them
How to prevent your next prospect from ghosting you
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How to diagnose why your buyer has stopped responding
There are 3 steps to diagnose why your buyer has stopped responding:
Use a sales framework to create a deal summary
Identify gaps in your deal summary
Review your call notes for cues that you missed
Use a sales framework to create a deal summary
A sales framework helps you gather and summarize the relevant information to close a deal. I reference the SPICED framework in this post because its very intuitive but you can use any sales framework or methodology that you are familiar with.
Identify gaps in your deal summary
Deals stall when a seller does not have all of the correct information, or has assumed they do but has not heard it directly from the buyer in their own words. The common gaps are:
Missing stakeholders. The vast majority of B2B purchasing decisions involve multiple stakeholders, so if you don’t figure out who they all are and what each of them care about your proposal will fall flat upon receipt.
Missing a critical event. The presence of a critical event tells you there is urgency to solve a problem. A buyer that actually wants to solve a problem will have already created an initiative to solve it and will be evaluating vendors as part of the solution for executing the initiative. They may not have a formal documented project plan but they will have an outline of it at minimum in their head, so if a missing critical event tells you that the buyer is not yet serious.
Missing impact. Your buyer needs to identify an outcome and way to measure it. If you are replacing a buyer’s existing solution at a similar price point, you can often win on the emotional impact of your solution (making day-to-day workflows easier, having a more intuitive user experience, saving time) as the budget for it already exists. However, if you are a net new solution that adds more cost to the business, you’ll also need to show the rational impact of your solution (cost savings, revenue growth, risk reduction) unless your price is low enough to keep you under the radar.
Review your call recording, transcript or notes for cues that you missed
There’s no such thing as the perfect sales call. I’ve listened to close to a thousand sales calls and have yet to find one where the salesperson followed up on every single thing the buyer said. Examples of cues that sellers frequently missed are:
The buyer mentioned other stakeholders, such as their boss or their team, but the seller didn’t ask a follow up question about them. Anytime a buyer mentions another stakeholder you can be sure that other person will be involved the selection process.
They stopped asking questions after hearing the price. If they mentioned early in the call that they wanted to know the price and then were eager to wrap up the call once you told them the price, you can be sure they were just gathering information for someone more senior to decide.
They mentioned your competitors. Salespeople generally go one of three ways when the buyer mentions a competitor. Either they ignore it and move on, or they knock the competitor, or they try to be nice but come across as insincere. When you hear a buyer mention a competitor its actually good news because it indicates they are serious about making a purchase.
They mentioned a project or initiative. Buyers are not always explicit about their timelines but if they do mention relevant initiatives and how often they experience the pain and problems that you solve. These are easy to miss.
They asked a question about the product. Any time a buyer asks you a product question there’s a reason behind it. Most sellers jump straight into a monologue about their unique technology or their exciting roadmap without first finding out how important the feature is to the buyer and why.
How to chose the right approach to re-engage your buyer
There are 3 steps to choosing the right approach: