Many years ago it was easy to reach prospects directly. If a prospect said, “Send me some information and call me back,” you could send the information, call your prospect and actually reach that prospect directly to continue your conversation.
Today, however, that does not work. If a prospects says, “Send me some information and call me back,” the sad truth is that you may never actually speak with that prospect ever again.
Or take the situation where you’ve had what you thought was a good discovery conversation and your prospect asks for more detailed information or even a proposal. They say, “Send me the proposal and call me back.” You send off that proposal, call your prospect and never, ever connect again.
What to do?
The answer is simple: Always, always, always schedule the next step. When your prospect asks you for information:
“I’d be happy to send that to you. I’ll get it out to you right away. Let’s set up a time to go over it together. What does your calendar look like?”
When your prospect asks for a proposal:
“I’d be happy to get a proposal to you. I’ll get it out to you by (fill in time frame). Let’s set up a time to go over it together. What does your calendar look like?”
If a prospect is unwilling to take this next step, to go through the information you’ve sent or more importantly, review the proposal you’ve sent, they may not actually be such a good prospect. Unfortunately, too many prospects say, “Send me information” or “Send me a proposal” when they don’t actually mean that they’re going to read your information or take action on your proposal. If this happens to you a lot, you probably need to take a step back and look at how you’re handling these conversations with prospects (and this is a topic for another newsletter article). For the time being it’s enough to, “Stop the Madness” and start scheduling your follow up.
