Have you ever run into something like this? You get a call from a prospect. They want you to come in for show and tell and discuss a project. You go to the meeting and they love your stuff. As you leave they’re telling you you’re the next best thing to sliced bread and they’ll call shortly to get things started. You’re thinking, “Woo hoo! They like me. They really like me.” You send over your estimate and then …

… nothing. Nada. Zip. Not even a peep.

So, there you sit at your desk thinking. “Sheesh, I thought it was a done deal. Were they just feeding me a line of hooie? What did I do wrong?”

Chill out. Sure, maybe they did get someone else. As my art school teacher used to say, “If they don’t want you, it’s their loss, not yours.” Often though, it’s a matter of changed priorities. In as much as the gig is on your front burner, something may have come up to put it on your prospect’s back burner. They may have been called out of town. It might be that another project took them by storm and their boss is on their back. Etcetera, so forth and so on.

What to do? Well, there’s not much you can do to get your prospect moving in your direction if they don’t want to play. A follow up phone call is in order, of course. If something else has come up, ask when you should call them back. For example, I’ve been working on a prospect, a Marketing Manager with a fairly large company. She contacted me looking for a site for one of their divisions. We met a couple of times and everything seemed to be moving forward. Then I didn’t hear anything. So, I picked up the phone and found out that the division head had put things on hold pending some legal issues and she was simply too busy to get back with me. I asked when I should call her to touch base. She said the mid part of Spring. So, down it goes on my calendar and I move forward with other prospects and projects.

It’s important not to put too much weight on any prospective project until the client signs in blood and the deposit check clears. It’s easy to start counting chickens before they’ve hatched and count on money that’s not in your account yet. Don’t fall into the trap.

You’ll get your fair share of tire kickers along the way, so you’ll want to keep up your marketing and promotion efforts to ensure you have several prospects in the pipeline at various stages of the sales cycle. You won’t close them all and there will be some you shouldn’t even tackle. But, the idea is to juggle several prospects at the same time, rigorously qualify them and focus on the ones you know you can win and will be a good fit for your practice.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt