I was working with a client today who is a professional service provider like me. We were talking about the sales and conversion process and how difficult it can be with certain prospects. What came up was one particular prospect whom my client has been working to convert for several months now only to be frustrated by yet another bout of indecision on the prospect's part.
The most frustrating part of this whole saga is that the prospect continues to transmit buying signals. I've had prospects like this. They tell you almost every time they see you that they're looking forward to working with you. At first you get a little excited because you think you have a new client on deck. Then, you get a little confused because they keep saying they want to work with you, but never take any action to do so.
After confusion comes frustration, maybe a little anger at yourself or the prospect. Finally you become apathetic. You actually don't care anymore if the prospect will buy or not. You wish to some extent that they would just go away. Do you have prospects like this?
Here's my take on this situation. Don't keep trying to make the sale. Why? Because it drains your energy and pulls you away from focusing your efforts on those who actually want to buy. Today. Look, you only have so much time to sell, so use your time wisely.
What I've found from my last 17 months or so of selling business coaching and marketing consulting is that most of my clients were sold after my initial free consultation. They didn't take months and months of repeat contacts.
Sure, I've had a few that took more than one call, but they're the exception. Therefore, when someone doesn't choose to hire me after the free consultation, I will make an effort to stay in touch with them through invites to free seminars, hosted networking events, or my newsletter, but I will not provide hours more of 1on1 effort. Too few hours in the day. Instead I'd rather try to sell something new to an existing client. Now there's a good prospect!
It is important to have a keep-in-touch system so you don't lose the ones that really just needed a little more time to get to know you and see what you've got to share in other contexts before making the decision. I'll post about keep-in-touch systems in the future. But for now my bottom line point is this: Don't keep following up directly with prospects for months even IF they give you repeated buying signals. Face the truth. If they really want to buy, they will come to you.
Incidentally in March I'll be kicking off a new one-year sales training, coaching and mastermind program for sales people and business owners that want to reach much higher levels of sales success. Here's the link to Sales Mastery info.
