Stoke Engagement By Sending Relevant Insight To Your Prospects

If you are being ghosted, you can keep prospects engaged with relevant insight rather than lame follow up tactics that just push them away. Buyers are busier than ever and dealing with more distractions. To get their attention and stay top of mind, you must demonstrate value.

Ghosted!

After a great deal of effort you have finally made contact with a prospect. You meet with them and they express interest in your solution or offering. You feel like you made a connection and send additional information.

However, now you can’t seem to make contact with your prospect to schedule a follow-up meeting. You leave voicemails, send emails, and even a direct message on LinkedIn. All to no avail. Your prospect is ghosting you.

Buyers Are Busier Than Ever

Virtually every person who sells a product or service encounters this, and lately, it seems to occur more frequently than in the past. There are several reasons.

Decision makers are busier than they have ever been. Their resources have been cut but they are still expected to deliver results. They have more fires to put out and more problems to deal with.

Plus, if you are talking to a large corporation, the decision making process often moves at a glacier pace even if the project appears to be a priority during your initial conversation.

Many sales people fail to understand that many decision makers have to jump through dozens of hoops before moving forward with a solution to their problem. Most key decision makers often have more projects on their plate and their priorities can change on a daily basis.

Demonstrate Value With Relevant Insight to Keep Prospects Engaged

The truth, in today’s fast moving world, is you are competing for your buyer’s attention with dozens of other distractions. If you don’t demonstrate value, they move on to other things.

Leaving a voicemail or sending an email like, “Mr. Prospect, I’m just following up on our conversation to see if you are still interested in moving forward with the solution we discussed” does not achieve this. It’s lame and exactly what all of your competitors are doing.

Instead, stay in the game and top of mind by demonstrating your value with relevant insight.

Do this by scouring newspapers, magazines and websites for information that will help them solve a particular business problem, preferably related to the solution you can provide. Send them a link to an article, report, white paper, or other related resource.

This may sound easy but it is actually challenging to execute and I speak from personal experience. This approach requires disciplined effort, time and planning.

Here are few ideas that will help.

Time Management

The most important step is to schedule the specific follow up in your time management system. Mark in your calendar specific action steps you will take to keep your name in your prospect’s mind.

• At the beginning of each week, block a few hours of research time to hunt for relevant insight that will help your prospects.
• Ideally, this time should NOT be scheduled during peak selling time.
• When you stop for a coffee or lunch use that time to surf the Internet or peruse through a trade magazine.
• Many sales people groan at this because it is a relatively boring process; however, it can pay dividends.

Manage Research Results

Keep a file of the helpful hints, ideas or tips you find. Rather than recreate the wheel with each prospect, you can send them articles that you read several months ago providing the content is still relevant. Your goal is to create an archive of a few dozen articles, newspaper articles or websites that contain pertinent information.

Track Follow-Up Activities in Your CRM

Next, you need to track the information you send to each prospect in your CRM. The last thing you want to do is send repetitive information to your prospect. You also want to measure your results and learn what works and what does not.

Develop a Follow-up Cadence

How often should you send insight to a prospect? There is no standard rule of thumb to follow because each situation is different.

Here is an example of a follow-up cadence that works:

• During the first month, send something to your prospect every five business days.
• For the next two months, reduce this to weekly.
• Afterwards, send them something at least once a month.

The larger the opportunity, the more important it is to keep your name in your prospect’s mind and for you to stay in the game. One of the biggest mistakes sales professionals make is to start strong but finish weak or halt their efforts.

Leverage an Omni-Channel Approach

Take an omni-channel approach to follow-up. Never rely on a single communication channel. Use a variety of contact methods including voicemail, email, direct messaging, text messaging, social media, and even snail mail.

Remember that a generic, I’m just checking in message does not work. If you want to avoid being ghosted and stay top of mind, you must keep prospects engaged with relevant insight.

When you demonstrate value, you’ll differentiate yourself from the competition, grab attention, and stay top of mind.

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