Summary: Do prospects ghost you? We've all been through it. You have a great conversation with an excellent prospect. They say all the right things and respond to you perfectly. It sounds like an ideal match! The right product or service for the right prospect at the right time. We just need to iron out a few details to get things wrapped up, but then they stop taking your calls. They stop responding to email. They ignore your texts. So, what do you do when people ghost you?<br> <br> <br> <br> David: Hi and welcome to the podcast today cohost Chris Templeton and I will be talking about what to do when prospects ghost you. Welcome Chris!<br> <br> Chris: Hi David. You know, salespeople have been dealing with prospects disappearing forever, and this term ghosting. I just heard about it recently and I wasn't quite sure what it was. It's apparently not the scary kind of ghosting, but it's really become popular as social media and texting have become more and more prevalent, hasn't it?<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Need Help with This?<br> <br> <br> <a href="https://www.topsecrets.com/call/" class="button-style-2 button-style-2-green">Schedule a Call</a><br> <br> <br> David: Yeah, it really has, and I think there's an argument to be made that this type of ghosting can actually be more scary. If you're in sales, it's probably scarier to have this kind of ghosting than to have what's traditionally viewed as ghosting.<br> <br> Chris: That’s a great point.<br> <br> David: And everybody has experienced this, as you've said, it's been happening forever. But this term is kind of interesting and I think from what I've seen, it's developed recently as part of the social media culture where you're having a conversation with someone and then they don't respond. And it's their turn to respond and they don't, and you send a text or you send a social media message and you don't hear anything back and they just basically disappear. So, while it's found its way into the personal culture, I think for anyone who's been involved in business or sales for a long time, they're totally familiar with the concept. They understand immediately and instinctively what it means. And of course, then the question is how do you make it go away? How do you keep it from happening? Which is what I'd like to talk about in this podcast.<br> Did the Prospect Really Ghost You?<br> Chris: Well and this goes back to that whole question that we've talked about of kind of our default definitions. And I think especially as salespeople, we have a tendency to go to the place of saying, “Oh my gosh, I've been ghosted.” When maybe I haven't even been ghosted. And so, when you look at it, how can you tell if someone's ghosting you or if they're just slow to respond and busy?<br> <br> David: Well, that happens a lot. There's a lot of times when people are just busy, they're tied up and they may not be intentionally ghosting you but you're not hearing back from them. And the only real answer to that is time is the final determinant of that. Time is the only thing that will tell you for sure whether they're ghosting you or whether they're just busy. If they're just busy at some point they will become less busy and you will likely hear from them again. But all of us in business have to determine sort of our threshold, our tolerance for pain. How long are we willing to endure a relationship that is completely one sided? If we're sending texts or if we're sending social media messages or if we're leaving voicemail messages for people, how long do we want that to go on? And there are some salespeople who will continue to pursue a prospect for months or for years. And I don't know, I guess that could work. I think to me it strikes me as a bit desperate.
