Today I wanted to share some ways you can prevent this from happening.
As a business development specialist and business owner, I love when people are transparent with me. In fact, I’d take an outright NO any day over being strung along only to have someone go cold. The latter is just a waste of my time.
The key to achieving transparency is to the make the other side comfortable with being open and honest at the onset of the relationship.
If you don’t do this, they’re more likely to correlate a “no” or “not right now” with confrontation then subsequently go cold.
Here is an example of something you could say during an initial meeting to inspire comfort and prevent someone from going cold:
“My goal is at the end of this call, for us to make a mutual decision whether my offering can add value to your organization. I really believe that it can, yet if it turns out that this isn’t a focus for you right now, I want you to know I understand. The most important thing is that we keep the communication lines open and that you let me know where things stand so that I can be most helpful moving forward…Does that sound good?”
By declaring this before going into sales mode, I have given the other party permission to be transparent with me.
I’ve communicated that it’s okay to say you have too many other things in the pipeline. I understand.
In a hard sale, I would never say this.
Yet in a complex deal/sale involving multiple people, odds are they’re isn’t going to be an impulse buy.
If you have a product they want, they’ll eventually take it. If your product sucks, they won’t. So it’s much more effective to lay the piping for an open relationship than push once you’ve reached a certain level of rapport.
Prevent Defense
Laying the foundation for comfort and transparency is a great start, but your job during the first meeting is far from done.
In order to really inspire transparency and prevent someone from going cold, you need to take the steps necessary that will enable you to build rapport and understand the process. Things I like to do:
1. Learn and record as many details about that person’s life outside of the deal you can.
Interests? Family? Where they live? These are all touch points of connection you’ll be able to leverage to build rapport. Emails and calls shouldn’t always be about the deal.
2. Keep the banter light and friendly.
I like to try and make myself as human as possible by making fun of myself or things we all experience.
3. Find out who else is involved in the decision making process and what the process looks like on their end.
If there are other parties involved I will attempt to insert myself in the process so they’re not pitching for me. Why do you think people seem all excited when you pitch them and then never respond to your emails? It’s usually because they pitched your product internally and it got shut down. Don’t let someone whose seen your product for 30 minutes be the one pitching. Own the sale.
4. Ask questions to find out what’s important to them so you can understand whether what I’m offering is actually a good fit.
Again, people are afraid of confrontation. Some people will politely let you pitch them and seem interested as a courtesy then never call you back. I’d rather know that it’s not what they’re looking for than waste my time keeping them in my pipeline.
5. Schedule the next meeting before ending the first one.
Some people are afraid to say no. Even if they’re only mildly interested, sometimes you can get a second meeting simply by getting them to commit to it while they’re still on the phone.
If I get the sense they’re pushing back and can’t insert myself into the internal sale, I’ll position the second meeting as an opportunity to check in.
A simple statement like this doesn’t seem as threatening:
“Let’s hop on a call next week just to check in after you and your team have had a chance to digest all of this. Do you have your calendar open?”
Unfortunately, taking all these precautions isn’t always enough to prevent someone from going cold….
Fear not! In the next posts coming your way, I’ll share ways to re-ignite conversations where prospects stop responding…
These tactic is killer and works like a charm : )
Talk soon,
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