What do you do when a Prospect Ghosts you? Episode 3

Video Transcript 

Aaron:

Right. So there are many things that they can be telling their customers. And in hoping that the customer will in turn tell you, hey, you know what, I’ll be buying from you because of the reasons they’ve been telling me. And that’s not true.

Terence:

All right. So, Aaron, I just want to ask you, this is a personal one, right? And I’m sure a lot of salespeople face the same problem is that I just sent a proposal to a prospective client in the U.K. and I just sent it to them. And, you know, we we had two meetings and I send the proposal via WhatsApp, and I thought he would reply straight away.

No response. And I experience this all the time. Right. You have you think you have this great rapport. You know, you close the cient and you send the proposal, and boom, they just disappear. The GHOST, you. What do you do in situations like that? Tell me what I can do.

Aaron:
All right. Now, let’s put in the two situations first. Okay? That’s a pity, too, because I want you to understand clearly what’s the difference between trying to save that situation and trying to prevent that situation from happening. So, I would always go on the prevention route then to save that situation because saving it will include you have to be defending your you’ll be trying to incorporate or try to push your thinking or perception onto the customers so that they wouldn’t then accept.

Oh, okay. Now I have to work with you now. Now I know why. Right. So it would be a very it would be pushy game. So it will be very tiring. So I don’t always like to go there. What I would advise you to do again is to first prevent it. And how do you want to prevent it?

By doing the right things first. By having the right principles. Now we need to know by then when you send a proposal and it goes to it. Right? Most other people will think, you know, I did something wrong and everything like that, but they have to go and think about the customer’s okay. Is this what you really need?

Did you actually diagnose properly what his situation requires what kind of information? Is he having a problem that is  painful enough for him to decide, you know what? Hey, I think I want this. I need a solution right now, because a lot of times when people try to build urgency, most people don’t even feel the urgency. That’s all that it is, price. You have a team timeline and you have a due date. Okay. That’s urgent for you. You come to me when urgent. But that is not the right way of doing things. That’s a lazy way of doing things. All right. You just feel, you know, you just give them some kind of timeline and they build their own urgency.

But we are salespeople. We should be a problem finder in the first place, because a lot of things, a lot of time people do urgency. What they thing was urgency comes from external. But you have to build the internal urgency. Beat me the corporation. Beat the internal person to talking to right. They when they started to look for a solution or there’s something triggered them to solve for solution, they would be have certain kind of reasons that the actually wanting to get a solution there must be something that’s happening right now but we may not know as salesperson.

So we need to first find out about that first look. And when there’s a reason that is painful enough for them to actually say, Hey, I want this job, but softies, just imagine today if I’m I’m selling premium toilet services. All right? I have a premium toilet decorated. It’s so nice without a stomach ache or, you know, you don’t want to go to the toilet. I keep on selling the premium toilet as a comment, so I give you a proposal. The premium toilet. Would you even consider going to for the premium toilet?

Terence:
No. There’s no real reason to.

Aaron:
Maybe not. Right. Let’s just see a girlfriend coming along and tell you, Hey, somebody sent us this proposal. If you never trap premium toilet before, come a boyfriend. Please, please. No, let me try one time. Did you have, like, some kind of urgency right now? Do you have a reason to go and try it?

Terence:
Yeah.

Aaron:
Yeah. Maybe you want a new girlfriend? Yeah. Maybe you and try to satisfy. Maybe you’re trying to be the best boyfriend ever. So you try it. Okay, you know what? I’ll spend you to go and get this premium experience. Second, I have a good boyfriend. You got a reason, you got internal motivation, and maybe she’s pressuring you and you’re going to be thinking, Hey, you know what?

If I don’t do this, I won’t get laid tonight. Right? you got a internal motivation. You got a internal pressure. You see what pressuring you. So if the other reason, let’s just say today if I’m having a stomach ache right and on that floor every single toilet is premium which you need to pay maybe 5 to $10, other toilets are free.

You can’t wait anymore because that piece of excretion or the feaces gonna to come up anytime soon. All right. That chocolate bar is going to come up anytime soon. If I stand in front of you. Right. Do I need to send you even a proposal for you to go into the toilet and say, you know what, I’ll just go in first? take my credit card right.

So because that’s internal motivation to build up this internal reasons, that reasons they want to be using it, right. now whenever the customer ghosts you and everything like that, it’s because they don’t feel the internal motivation. We as a salesperson, we failed to understand what the internal motivation is, what’s the reason they’re going to keep buying. And most are the time. Most salespeople that I met when before they came to my training, I understand when I asked.

Most of the time, the reason that you are as a salesperson telling the customers right are not the actual reasons that the customer buy, customer buy because of their own reason, customer buy because of their own reasons. And sometimes there’s nothing to do with what you say. The premium toilet. We can talk about all the decorations, all the gold plated and stuff like that, but when you have that stomach ache that you need to go right now and you can take another step without shaming yourself, right?

If you just imagine this, what would be more painful to you having other people, seeing you sh*t in your pants, you sh*t in your pants and it’s brown color on a solid spot with smell and you are in the middle of a shopping mall. One which one would be more painful? The five bucks. The ten bucks or that happened?

Yeah. I mean, I’ll pay 100 bucks, right? Right. If it came to that.

The worst thing happened. The worst thing is that just that thing you should, I think is your ego in a face you do not know where to put right. And right now, what you’re going to be fearing right, is people having everyone is a reporter detective for the show to you and it point the camera out to you to take that video put it on the Internet.

It’s going to be viral. And where else are you going to put your face after that right. That is the most painful part. Right. So so we try to avoid that.

Yeah. The first thing is to diagnose property, right, exactly.

So when we can find out the actual reason that they want to take action on certain things, whether it be to find a solution or consider taking action to solve a problem that it can actually recognize and identify and acknowledge, that’s a problem. That’s the first step when they have that and the rest of the sales will be easy.

It doesn’t also that when people know that is a problem, they want to solve it because some problem are painful. Some problem are not painful, some problem are more urgent, some problem are not urgent, right? So you need to diagnose properly. If you know the problem is not so urgent, then we should think about how can actually build urgency for people to take action.

So the more urgent the problem is, the more people, more likely people are going to come back to you. Right. Just imagine you are going out and your phone don’t have any signal. And when you were going out at a time, you took a public transport or grab all Uber and go to a place. And after that, your signal lost.

What were you then? What will you do at a particular moment? You can’t go back because you don’t have internet.

Terence:
Yeah. Walk somewhere.

Aaron:
Yeah. But the first thing you need to find out is to find out how can I solve this problem? I want to go to a service center. I want to get this fixed immediately because I want to get right. You got to deal with the agent, right? So most of the time when we sell, you want to take action first.

When you this property, you know that internal motivation and from that right, you can build up that pressure for them to take action and that’s more likely to cause them to reply to you and respond to you and why people do respond. Because maybe you sound annoying. You sound like you wanted to sell something. You send a proposal in hoping that the customer would buy that.

They don’t even know right now that you understand the problem completely. And that is why they want to avoid because I would have what people that do not understand I go from completely just like a market the calling you. Yep so they tell you hey this is city calling from Citibank right. And I have this a loan offer and personal loan offer we have the lowest right now, 3.7%.

You know, I think you should take it. You can get up to 80,000, whatever. Right. But in the back of my mind, she don’t even know who I am. So I don’t I don’t even feel that she’s going for me. Right. I’m probably at the back of my mind. I have more than 80,000 to spend. I can set my bank that what she’s about to offer me the why.

Yeah, unless she told me. Because if she knew that I was a fluent customer that had no loans, 3.7%, nothing to me. If she were to tell me, hey, I’m not sure it’s going to be interest in this, maybe at more money than this than loan this lot can offer by I can offer you a maximum of hundred K at 1.2% interest, the lowest ever in the industry right now that no one can I would do and we can only do it for the maximum of how you love to get this loan.

I would have been interested as an affluent customer because I know where to make money more than that 1%. That’s she’s going to be charging me the basis of attacking me. Right. So then it will be a different narrative. Yeah, but the difference with a lot of people when they get that kind of objection is because they think they should save it.

Back then I was always do the prevention case because once my prevention cases happen from the fun until the moment of the close up sales process, if I do everything correctly, this should have the minimal amount of time happening as a lower chance of happening. That would be the best way to deal with this situation. And a lot of people want that the wanted the pain killer.

Right. To solve the problem at a particular time and not taking the fight to mean that the long route to actually stay healthy first. So my advice is to be healthy first, go to long run, use the right principles study, make sure your foundation is good. Then when it comes to this part, people won’t be avoiding you make sense.

So prevention is better than cure is one way for people to saying all this.

So if I were to let’s say if I were to fix that. Yeah, they say, you know, what are the ghosted. Yup. There are some certain things that we can actually say to get them to return to retentive. For example, you want to be able to send them a simple, short message. Any updates? Mm hmm. What do you think about the previous proposal?

And a lot of people would do this or I sent you this proposal on two months ago and one month ago. You haven’t replied me yet. So, you know, that is what they sent. And do you know what happens to other people, brain when you do that? Do I owe you a reply?

Terence:
Yeah. It’s like, what the heck?

Aaron:
What the heck are you talking about? I don’t even know you like.

Terence:
Yeah.

Aaron:
Right. And people are like, you’re blaming me right now for and telling me that I haven’t been repaying you for one month and you’re blaming me at the particular moment. So I would feel uneasy. I would feel bad about the situation. Why would you blame me? Right. So this is all about empathy and having a principle of other people’s lives.

It doesn’t mean that you give everything go out to people by just understanding what condition they’re in right now, what situation right now, and try to make the best of the situation. And a lot of people say something in that particular situation to try to get people to close that wrong because the deal is like people not responding.

Your next response shouldn’t be getting people to close with you, to close the deal, to continue to deal. The next response should be instigating a response, should be trying to respond back, a positive response back so they can start back off the conversation, not the deal. The deal. You already get didn’t respond to. You need to start of the conversation to continue back to that, Rob.

And a lot of people want to come to us and say your deal and when they have the mindset and principle, they will do something wrong for sure.

Mistake. So the strategy is to take a step back rather than trying to advance what you already have.

Terence:
Yeah. And that’s very true. Okay. Because if you keep on advancing, you won’t you don’t have the full spectrum of what people situation are. And how would you want to advance from that.

Aaron:
Yeah. And the more you do it, the more you sounds like pushy and the more you are, the more people feel like, hey, you know what, you’re just trying to get the sales from me.

Terence
Yeah, great.

Aaron:
Now that’s how I would see it.

Terence:
Wonderful.