Warming Up Cold Prospects
Warming Up Cold Prospects
Have you ever been so close to closing a sale when all of sudden your calls are not answered and not returned? You have talked to the prospect several times. All of the calls you have made to the prospect have been positive and all of a sudden your hot lead has become very unavailable.
You have no idea what happened. It is our sales nature to want to continue to pursue what was once a hot lead in an aggressive sales approach. We want to get back with the prospect immediately to close the sale.
It is important now to realize that we are not as close to closing the sale as we thought. We must decide how to approach the prospect. We don’t want to appear too aggressive because we may lose the prospect.
Aggressiveness at this point could make us appear too desperate and only interested in getting the sale. The best approach is to proceed with caution. We don’t want the now not-so-hot lead to turn into a “Not Interested” status.
We must determine what went wrong. The most common reason is that your prospect is not ready to move forward. The most dreaded reason your calls may not be returned is your prospect has decided to go with another company. There are many other reasons in between.
The goal now is to find out what went wrong. You should try to talk to the prospect on the phone. At this point, a less aggressive approach should be used. You might apologize for not being able to reach them over the past few days.
You will want to emphasize to the prospect that you want to make sure you have provided all of the information necessary for them to make a decision. Also, let them know since you haven’t heard from them you would appreciate their feedback.
If you pursue constructive feedback from your prospect, you open the door so the prospect can communicate with you without feeling pressured to buy. You will show your prospect you value their opinion.
You will be able to find out what went wrong and hopefully supply answers that could close the sale or you will know to move on because your prospect has identified why they are not moving forward with your company.
It’s easy to jump to conclusions when you don’t hear back from a prospect. I can only tell you this. I can’t count the times when I am on the phone with someone and lose phone connection.
My first assumption is they are not interested and didn’t want to talk to me. When I call them back I am always surprised because I usually find out they didn’t hang up the phone on me after all. It was just a bad phone connection.
Please don’t jump to conclusions. Always try your best to find out what happened. We can compare our prospect leads to reading a book. You won’t know the entire story if you don’t read the book from start to ending.
