Rohit,

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.

Best,

Edward

posted June 13, 2008

Hi Rohit,

As put forward by all, a lead disappearing into a black hole is the most dreaded thing to happen for a sales person

The reason as i see is

1)Lead was not qualified properly in the very first place, the lead generating criteria is always a product specific/process specific/service specific/needs specific. So its very important to initially understand, is my leads filter placed rightly. If not then change that first

2)Clear Communication is another important thing. Many a times a lead fizzles out because he/she does not perceive any benefit out of the product/service based on your Communication. So always try and ensure that in all pieces of communication at least one win-win proposition is clearly mentioned. It always makes the lead think and feel positive towards the entire proposition

3)Another thing which has been previously mentioned is also very important and thats communication via various means like e-mails/mails/voice communiaction et all. A person might not access one or other of the access points but chances are rare that all access points are not accessed. Also ensure and keep in mind of adhering to any timelines given. If a lead has asked not to communicate now and after a fortnight, ensure that the communication happens after a fortnight and not after a week or month.

The questtion of how many times to try and touch base before knocking the lead off is again very subjective. It all depends on the product/service and the present situation. If its a very big deal, i bet no one loses hopes for even years. So its purely your judgement. Ideally if a prospect has turned totally cold and you perceive it cant be revived, i would advise cross that off from your list.

Its always better to have not interested leads than a doubtful lead.

With a healthy pipeline, the movement of about 30% leads to black hole should not have huge impact on your sales performance.

posted June 15, 2008

So a prospect has decided to talk to you about your products and see if there is a way that they can solve business issues they are facing. So thankful to have been invited to dance you proceed to dump as much information to him that you can, or you blast him with a thousand questions. The result is the same for both you overwhelm the prospect and he returns to the much easier task of not returning your calls. What went wrong? After all he did call you to get information didn't he?

I cant count the number of sales people (myself included) that have fallen into this trap. The first moments of any relationship (sales or otherwise) are fraught with risk for the prospect. Your job as a salesperson is to allay that risk and lead the customer to a new future free of the risks. But similar to a first date part of the purpose of information sharing is to start building small bridges of trust between you and your prospect. As these bridges are built more intimate information is shared until a strong relationship is formed.

The most important of these bridges is the one formed on the first call(and where the majority of clients fall into the black hole). Here is the principles of how we avoid this trap in our organization:

1. Focus on the prospect- Identify 5 or 6 questions that are going to get the customer to open up about why they are starting to look at this project. Save your detailed, hard driving questions for later. Ensure these questions are open ended and indirect.

2. Pay attention to details-Listen for details that might spark questions for later. Write them down dont disturb the prospects stream of thought. These tidbits will be important as you "peel the onion".

3. Leave the prospect in suspense-Dont open the kimono on the first date. Build suspense by revealing pieces of your solution that are relevent to the prospect and generate value, but let the prospect know that information sharing is a two way street. He must also be an active participant in the sales process.

4. Be honest. If you dont know something say so. Honesty is the lynch pin of any relationship. Dont oversell yourself or your products. Be realistic and frank.

5. Be brief. Dont try to do too much on that first call. Your objective just like your prospects is to determine if you are the kind of person they want to do business with.

6. Gain a commitment. Get the second date. Confirm that the prospect has gotten value out of the conversation and that both of you would like to learn more. Schedule a second call, provide an agenda of what you will be covering and what the customer will get out of it. Book it!

First impressions are key, be considered in your initial engagements and earn your follow on conversations, and you will see less of your prospects fall off of the map.

posted June 18, 2008

Hello Rohit,

This is a common occurrence in the sales world; prospects come and go. If a prospect suddenly disappears, you must examine the situation and determine if it was due to any of the following:

- Your prices
- Your method of contact (did you reply promptly, did you schedule an agreed follow up date and did you provide all of the necessary information in a clear and understandable manner?)

When I experience the dreaded disappearing act, it is generally because the client is with a smaller organization with limited funding. 9 times out 10 prospects discontinue contact with you because they cannot afford the product and it seems much easier to delete an email or ignore a follow up call than to tell you no.

You should only try to follow up two to three times over a couple week period. If you hear nothing during this time, than it is best to let the contacting up to the prospect. If no connection is made, than it is best to stop trying to reach them.

As long as you keep your pipeline full with potential clients, a few “drop offs” here and there shouldn’t hurt you too much.

posted June 13, 2008

Here is my take on this...
I have been selling outsourcing services (IT/ITES), since last 6 years. I am not sure if my experience could be relevant to you, as its very much industry specific. If the prospect has been showing interest initially, and then suddenly goes to the Black hole, it means he is not interested any longer. In the outsourcing areana, the biggest sign of good prospect is the level of engagement. If the clients is replying to your emails, talking to you, returning your VM's but never has any project to outsource is the best prospect, because he is connected to you.

Always remember, being a sales guy you should never give a hint about your urgency to your customers.
There need to be a real pain, for them to outsource, and they would always talk to you.

posted June 13, 2008

Rohit,

I concur with most of the responses thus far - Jill had some great advice - but I will also add that in my view the responsibility for "keeping in touch," i.e. lead nurturing, falls upon marketing, not sales. By that I mean I would expect a sales rep to make a reasonable best effort to re-engage with an interested prospect, but after a few such calls/e-mails (I'll leave the sales experts to define what that number is) it should fall upon marketing to have in place an intelligent, personalized, rules-based lead nurturing program that triggers a series of automatic e-mails to those prospects, and then alerts the sales rep instantly when the prospect responds.

With today's marketing automation technology, it's possible to set up automated campaigns that trigger based on whatever criteria the user defines - one such criterion could be "leads that haven't been touched in 45 days." Or the sales rep can choose to manually add a lead to the lead nurturing list.

It just seems to me that after X number of calls you're sure to hit diminishing returns and your time (and your sales reps' time) is better spent moving onto new prospects. If the abandoned prospect is truly interested and just "swamped," as others suggest, an effective lead nurturing program should be enough to lure him/her back into a dialogue with your company.

Regards,

Howard Sewell
Connect Direct Inc.
"Top 100 Agency 2008" - B2B Magazine

Links:

• http://www.connectdirect.com/request/whitepaper.html

posted June 13, 2008

Well, Rohit. First we have to make a difference:

Leads are leads, nothing but leads. They come and go from a lot of sources and with different contents. Before considering them something else, they have to be qualified. Maybe they are not potential business, just inquiries or mistakes, for instance. So there are a hugh amount of potential reasons for the dropping off.

But if talking about prospects, knowning customer´s needs, with confirmed financial resources, with the internal support gained, all required approvals met and final quotation submitted, there is only one reason for the dropping off:

Objections were not well identified, so not resolved. But the Competitor did the homework...

Regarding the extent of the pursuit, well... it depends how far you got with the potential customer, but in general (do not generalize at home, kids) and after some reasonable time without any respond, first a kind letter/message/e-mail putting yourself at their disposal for any future need and later, a new contact as soon as you consider customer´s buying process cycle is about to start again.

posted June 18, 2008

We are a lead generation center. If you are getting leads that showed interest to another party but then are showing no interest when you are getting them, you are getting bad leads. If you are getting a situation in which you yourself have talked to them and they no longer show interest in picking up the phone, that is a different deal. That means one of two things, either they are busy (decision makers usually are) or they were not impressed with your message, (sorry to be blunt, but my clients expect it).

My impression from your question is that you are getting leads that you have not talked to and they are actually cold. Chances are good they are not getting qualified properly. My team looks at a variety of qualifications, idnetifying the decison maker, determining his write off authority, if he is on a committee, when does the committee meet, do they drive projects with budget or budgets with needed projects, current environment, current pain points, timeframes for projects etc. If you are not getting these items, you are paying too much for your leads. Just finding a guy and a level of interest in learning more about the service/solution is not enough. You need to be able to understand that company so your OSR can spend their time closing business instead of following up on "cold calls." In cases where we have set up follow up times for the OSR to contact and he makes several attempts to contact the prospect and cannot, we take the lead back over and do the calling until we get a new time set up.

If you are interested in discussing this in greater detail and see if our services better fit your need for lead generation, feel free to contact me.

Koran Peterson
VP of Outsourced Solutions
Dakota Performance Solutions
605-274-0606 ext 20
kpeterson@dakotaperformance.com

posted June 18, 2008