Ask HN: How to avoid ghosting by potential customers?
The specific question I have is, assuming this is going to happen and accepting that there will be a subset of potential prospects that do this, has anyone found any ways to avoid this from happening, seeing warning signs, or reducing the rate this happens? In particular interest, it seems clear they are no longer interested in the product or service, but were they ever interested? I'm reading about the psychology around why this happens too and from what I understand they were interested at some point, but then changed their mind, perhaps the product wasn't good enough, or didn't quite meet their needs, whatever the reason, you won't find out, but I am assuming they were interested at some point. Of course, the important thing is to quickly move on when you have realized this has happened but I think the rate of ghosting has crept up and hearing about other people's experience and thoughts on this might save me and others reading a lot of time.
26 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 68.1 ms ] threadAlso hidden in your text is "perhaps even written custom code"... could it be that they got what they actually wanted from you and no longer need you?
Finally - sorry if this sounds harsh - if you've exchanged 75 emails and not made a sale, you need to learn to sell better.
Read "Demonstrating to win" (cheesy title but absolute gold for enterprise solution sales), and "Start with No" by Jim Camp (fantastically logical and easy to use way of negotiating that will appeal to techies)
Good luck!
Lower-cost B2B SaaS means the solution already exists, and you've got to understand how/if their business process will adapt well enough to it to make it worth the money to them based on a lot less information. You'll miss a lot more, and get 'ghosted' a lot more as a result. But you do get to speak to a lot more prospective buyers.
Asking directly for feedback as to why they aren’t responding sometimes works, and otherwise I’ve found the best way to respond is just to let them know you’re available should they want to get back in touch, and follow up in 6 months.
Personally, as a buyer I don’t treat sales reps as a nuisance, I treat them as a resource.
Because email is very low social pressure, it's probably just people avoiding the awkwardness / time & effort of doing that.
If you want feedback on why they're not interested any more, probably the best way is a phone call, or failing that an email which makes the very clear upfront assumption that the sale is not going to happen, and just asking for a quick reason why they changed their mind (just assume they have upfront as well - 90% of the time you'll be right). I think most people would be happy to do this if they are confident the conversation is really going to end there.
It has to be the bulk of the conversation that makes it inevitable and desirable.
Customers keep asking for info on upgrades, specs, try to trick us into doing detailed engineering - then suddenly boom, they are dead quiet at best or at worst stalling - replying to your requests, but only non-committing.
I've since made it a checklist item that we notify our customers right away during first contact that IF they lose interest for any reason whatsoever - just let us know so that we may put the matter to rest, no hard feelings.
Stalling until we give up is not kinder than just being brutally honest.
I've found that quite a few customers appreciate us stating it so bluntly, as it gives them, too, an easy way out of the otherwise awkward situation of us spending time and effort providing solutions (or gathering a response!) and them from spending same trying to let the matter drop without expressly stating they are doing so.
It does not prevent us from spending time on projects which never come to fruition, but it does help us cut our losses as the time between customer losing interest and us being able to close the matter is decreased.
1. build a diagram for a single conversation
2. draw branches for every positive and negative potential customer replies
3. optimize your diagram to shorten negative conversations (so "wrong" customers won't feel chained to your interactions and are able to leave at will)
4. try to visualize the Happy Path [1] to conversion from potential to customer and fragment it into a couple of conversations with clear start-finish-accomplishment marks so you can gradually build every potential customer profile and really know whether they're really interested (coming back spontaneously) or not (leaving while replying, so you know the reason)
Make sure your potential customers can always get out of conversations at will (showing they're not who you're looking for) and remember sometimes conversations get awkward enough that people just won't know how to get out of it and just do it anyway - leaving without a reply
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6bZG7vTUNM
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_path
The reasoning behind it stems from one of three things; I've found a solution to my problem so I don't need your service/product any longer, the problem I was having has been superseded by something else so I've shelved it for the foreseeable future, or I've discussed your product/service with the upper-management and they've got back to me with a big red 'denied'.
I suppose the solutions to the above would be as follows:
1. Ask whether the buyer is considering other options in the same market of the service/product you're providing. As the buyer, I'll be messaging up to 20 different sales-people at any one time to see what they can offer me compared to their counterparts. There's nothing more frustrating for me than a sales-person who beats around the bush - so even if their offer might be better, it's not worth my time to organise meetings, discuss price, email back and forth, and do other busy-work with them when I have another sales-person that is transparent with what they are offering from day 1. Succinctly put, find out who you're competing against quickly and close the deal before they can offer something better.
2. Again, this is in the realm of closing the deal quickly. I often get jobs that crop-up mid way through negotiations, that supersede said negotiations. There's not much you as a sales-person can do in this case other than close quickly, or be persistent with contact so when the job does come back onto my radar I've still got your contact at the back of my mind.
3. Discuss whether the buyer is at the whims of a 'upper-management sign-off'. If they are, you can discuss with them as to how to make it easier for them to get that sign-off. I recently had to buy a new CAD package. There ended up being some contention between myself and the uppers due to integration with our current systems, but one of the sales-people and I talked through the issues I was having with management and rectified it, going as far as writing some new code to help with the integration before we even started to talk about price. The other sales-persons basically said "Hope you get it sorted. Lets us know how it goes" and that was that. Obviously we went with the prior package, almost entirely due to the service.
At the end of the day, there are 101 other reasons, but those are the top 1, 2 and 3 I can think of currently. I hope that helps somewhat!
- be explicit about your strong desire to work together, but it’s ok if the other side doesn’t share the feeling
- ask the potential client early on to let you know ASAP if it’s no longer worth it for you to
- give clear timelines to keep a commitment on an engagement. If they don’t make progress by X date you’re moving on to other engagements
- if they disappear send a firm “thanks for your interest, sounds like the timing won’t work right now, we’re moving on...” email
In general, if you want a better chance of an answer, pick up the phone. Sure, they might not answer and you might get in "a few months maybe". But you also might get a reason why it's no, a date they might be interested in it again, or the person that's taken over the job from the person that showed the initial interest.
That's about all you can do. 75 emails is... A lot without making a sale. Fwiw I'll usually get 1-3 emails asking what client wants, hopefully a phone call, I write a proposal and send it over, I wait a few days and follow up asking what they think. Maybe the want to negotiate terms or whatever, that's 1-3 more emails and maybe another call. All in all <10 emails, 2 calls max, and I either have a sale or I say thanks and feel free to contact me in the future if they're interested in this or other work.
I never work for free without getting paid for something first. I won't do coding tests, I won't write code, I won't figure out a problem. I will give them expert advice if I can and if it will help them see the value of my work. However say I've had a client pay for a job before and they have a small ask - I'll probably do it for free if it's 2 or less hours one time.
And intuition - I mean that's hard but you gotta be able to read people. Know when they're kicking tires, know when they're in over their head or out of their element, know when they don't have the Auth to get a request filled.
1. Your product doesn't meet the spec and/or doesn't work as advertised
2. Your product is good but I wasn't able to get the budget cleared to actually move forward.
3. There is budget now but stuck internally in political/procurement hell after my handover to the project manager or procurement person.
4. All good, but project cancelled.
TLDR - Moby Dick theory of enterprise procurement. [1]
I try my best to let the salesperson know whats up but after the handover I lose contact.
[1] https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part5.html
Some people are so bored at work they pretend interest just to have someone to talk to. Then maybe they get busy, or fired. Sales is rough.
This took some doing, but suspected cause is Epic. Customer, once aware that a high-pain problem exist, asks Epic what/whether they have a solution to this already (almost all large hospitals are on Epic in the US). Epic runs a strategy where they answer "yes" to every single one of these questions. Customer waits patiently for 3-4 months for a solution to materialize, which fails to do so. Only after this do they turn back to us to actually deliver.
Looking at your product, it is not inconcievable, that during procurement, one of the stakeholders bring up "why don't we just use X?", and this turns the conversation from purchasing your specific stuff to "how can we solve Y problem?". If this is so, you might want to have a larger picture during your sales pitch, which shows benefit matrix across competitors in the space, clearly marking you as a winner & sent to the stakeholders so as for this not to derail purchasing process.