How to handle an unresponsive buyer
Just following up on my previous email...
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
How to diagnose why your buyer has stopped responding
There are 3 steps to diagnose why your buyer has stopped responding: