Anyone worth their salt in sales has faced the dilemna when their prospect decides to disappear and since I am worth a lot of salt (and no pepper) here goes...
Interested Leads suddenly drop off! – What are the possible causes and To what extent should we pursue the prospect?
When you generate a lead in a campaign and you receive a positive response, you start the first level of talks (Call or email) and suddenly the lead disappears! Sometimes Key Contact person is out of office doesn’t pick up your phone call, Prospect doesn’t respond to your follow-up emails. I generally try to follow-up 3-5 times either through telephone or e mail. If still there is no response I move on. Sometimes it may be that the contacted CTO/CEO are extremely busy, and do not get sufficient time to continue responding. What could be the possible reasons for suspects/prospects dropping off? To what extent should we pursue the prospect by telephone/ emails?
This is an issue that everyone who engages a sales prospect runs into sooner or later... if they stick with it that is.
There could be a number of reasons a prospect "falls off the earth" or "goes dark" but the most important aspect of this process is not what the prospect does (or why) but what the sales professional does.
Nonetheless, one of the fundamental aspects of prospecting is to maintain a consistent flow of activity between yourself and the prospect. I call this, Incremental Action. Sandler refers to it in some degree as establishing up front contracts, which enable a sales professional to maintain the continuity (and integrity) of the selling process from start to finish.
Finally, each sales professional will have a gauge of how much time to invest in this type of pursuit but I usually follow-up until I get a "no" or a "yes". Both are equally valuable to your continued success.
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