The Drift

The Drift

Beware of Ghosts!

While this week is clearly prime time for ghosts, rest assured they are with us all year long. If you’re in sales, feeling haunted is an everyday emotion.

You have what seems like a breakthrough meeting with a client… full of promise. Then you’re ghosted. The customer asks you for case studies, more details, even some deal points. Then you’re ghosted. You and your team labor over an RFP submission for which your site, service or platform seems perfect. And then you’re ghosted.

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. First, prevention:

  • Before you agree to the follow-up work and exit the sales call with your customer, get them to agree to and schedule a specific date when they’ll accept or redirect your offer. Ambivalence here is a red flag. Stay in the conversation and keep qualifying.
  • Also, while you’re still engaged, ask specific questions about the process. What will happen with this proposal once we send it? Tell me about the approval process? What’s your timeline? What role will X (decision maker) play in the approval? If you’re patient-yet-persistent in this conversation (don’t answer the questions for them!) you’ll be amazed how much more qualified your opportunities become.
  • If your proposal or RFP submission contains pricing or availabilities, include an expiration date in your response. Something as simple as We can honor these rates and features until November 30, 2023. Then refer to that expiration date often… in your cover note, in your follow up emails, in your text messages. You will have manufactured a deadline that gives shape and form to your follow up. We are three days from the date we need a response: Are you still interested in us holding this open?

But what if you’re being ghosted right now?

  • Stop using meaningless safe words in your follow up. You’re not checking in or bumping this up in the inbox. You’re seeking a specific answer.
  • Invite the client to tell you no. No is better than maybe, but you’ve got to earn it. If you’ve moved on, we will close out this opportunity and focus the resources on other customers.
  • If all else fails, withdraw your proposal. As we’ve gotten no response or communication for X weeks, it seems that you’ve gone in another direction. So, we are withdrawing this proposal and will look forward to working with you on the next one.

If all this sounds a bit radical, consider what all these weeks of aimless checking in and guessing are doing to your price integrity, your standing with the client, and your ability to accurately forecast. Now that’s a spooky story!

“They’re Ghosting Us!” is just one of a dozen, stand-alone problem-solving workshops we use to support digital sales teams. For more information on this and others, contact us.

Original Illustration by Eric Sands.


More Posts

Top of Mind.

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.


The Pivot to Leadership.

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.


Changing of the Guard.

Will you end up seeing any interim revenue If you form a proactive "bridge plan" for a key account in transition? Will these steps rescue your original buy? Can’t say. But the choice between proactive service and worried helplessness ought to be an easy call. Treat this current disruption as just one chapter in the relationship – as an opportunity to serve – and you’ll be making its foundation stronger. And how can that be a bad idea?


Mind the Gap. Save the Quarter.

You can get anxious about the gap in your quarter. Or you can get busy. You won’t always close the gap, but how you go about it will always make you a better and more complete seller.


Our Friend Nick.

Perhaps there’s a friend in your life who shows up for you; not just with a kind thought or a supportive word, but ready to work. He’s someone you know will keep showing up, keep serving and doing for others, but he’ll do it with such humility and grace that … well, you might not completely appreciate him fully until the day he’s not there. For me that friend was Nick Johnson. And that day was today.


Complexity is the Enemy.

Too often, we not only ignore the implications of complexity, we actively conjure it up. We share dazzling flow charts and demos, packed with cylinders and data sources and lightning bolts. Terabytes of this and nanoseconds of that. We let our geek flags fly… and unintended consequences follow. It highlights what we know vs. what they don’t. It makes the customer feel unprepared, under-resourced. Complexity is the petri dish where doubt grows.


Attention Neutrality.

Want attention? Then pay more than your share. Do the work up front to really understand those on the other side of the screen. Engage in pre-meeting communication and planning to really align with their needs. Greet people when they show up. Have a second question to ask and really care about the answer. I’m going to work to be Attention Neutral going forward: for all I get, I’ll try to put back that much and more. I won’t just listen as much as I talk; I’ll care as much as I want to be cared about.


Working the Core.

In my career I’ve seen about eight of these economic pullbacks, six of them in the digital era. No one can say exactly how long, precisely how deep, or specifically which companies come out better. But I’m confident in offering one blanket prediction and one bit of universal advice.


12 for 2023.

We here at Upstream appreciate the hard job you do. May a look at this list give you the extra lift you need in a moment of challenge.


The C in C-Suite.

Most of us show up for our hard-to-book C-Suite interactions with an agenda that’s far too junior and tactical, and we get swiftly delegated or – worse – ignored. It's because we don’t fully realize what the C in C-Suite stands for.


What Just Happened?

Too many of us plan meticulously for much of the meeting, but fail to do any planning for how it will end. Too much time is spent early on exposition and data, and too little is left for the disciplined closing process that could actually lead to a sale. Another mad, disorganized packing job ensues. And the probability and next actions we post in our CRM are little more than educated guesses. It doesn’t have to be this way.


The Season of Both.

As sellers and executives, we’re both sporadically connected to our colleagues and yet consistently alone in our work, accompanied by only our numbers, hopes and doubts. At Upstream Group, we are asking – humbly and curiously – what our role should be in this Season of Both. Why do our customers and community truly need us now? We are finding answers and developing strategies based on a handful of questions… questions I’d like to share with you today.