Once your would-be customer has vanished into the mist, it may be too late to do anything about it. They’ve likely disappeared because they either weren’t serious about your offer in the first place, or for some reason no longer are. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get closure. And it certainly doesn’t mean you couldn’t have prevented this from happening in the first place.
To be a seller is to advance a sale, not to go through safe, predictable motions. To visit a customer only hoping to be Top of Mind for some future hypothetical buy is to suffer the subtle bigotry of low expectations.
If there’s too much anxiety, disappointment, disconnection, blame and short-term thinking within your sales organization – or within your own personal sales career – you’re not alone. But the answer isn’t better management or oversight or organization. It’s leadership. From everyone.