A potential customer. That’s all she is. At this point. You’ve had some interactions and meetings with this lead. And she has even expressed high interest in your offering. Yet, for some reason, and for some period of time, she has gone cold on you. And several attempts you make to rekindle the conversation make no difference. What do you do?
Well, many will suggest that you initiate a breakup with that customer. I agree. But not for the same reasons. Many salespeople use breakups literally – as a goodbye. Or a database cleaning exercise. But I think it can be used more strategically. Rather than being inspired by goodbyes, breakup messages should be crafted with the intention to re-warm a warm lead that has gone cold. Paradoxically, the idea of a break up is actually to make up; to rekindle the conversation. And to proactively and intelligently nudge leads to make a decision.
Breaking up does not mean grabbing the lead by the throat and screaming at him to stop wasting your time (although in a few cases, this visualization could be self-fulfilling). The art of breaking up is one area which has been carefully mastered by tech entrepreneur, Jói Sigurdsson, founder and CEO of CrankWheel. Jói and his team at CrankWheel, which is a simple screen sharing technology, power sales and service by adding an interactive visual presentation to phone calls, thereby allowing you to close sales while the prospect is interested. Their platform reduces the need for follow-ups, and tailor the presentation depending on how the call develops.
For Jói, one of the most important things in the sales process is to not stop following up. And you don’t stop following up until prospects explicitly tell you they are not interested. However, in many circumstances, you might face the roadblock of a customer who has expressed interest but has gone cold after several interactions. At least for me, I meet this challenge more than often. How do you pull the trigger to restart the conversation. Among other things, Jói shared with me three things he and his team have at the core of their breakup art: cost, value and action.
1) Cost: Determine the cost of follow up
Find out how much it’s costing you to follow up on this potential customer. There will be low cost or high cost follow ups. Low-cost follow ups, for example, typically use emails as channels of follow ups and doesn’t cost much other than the time investment (which could happen just once a month). And there are high-cost follow ups that involve multiple communication with multiple stakeholders on the potential buyer side. A useful rule of thumb would be to keep following up if the costs are low. However Jói suggests that with “higher touch sales, when you feel that you’ve given them everything to make a decision and they didn’t give a yes or no or request for more information,” it might be time to pull the trigger. Especially if you reach this point once or twice, then you know it’s time.
2) Value: Reiterate the value for the potential customer
There has been a lot of bashing of follow up emails that are as empty as ever. They provide no additional value to the lead and are full of dry statements like “touch base” and some other funny content. But a breakup up message is a chance to show your commitment to helping the potential company succeed. And that’s one thing Jói and his team highlights. Jói and his team would typically reach out to leads and “.. say, hey we’ve been working with you for a long time and we’ve been trying to deliver value…” Eventually they rehash the value and state why it’s worth paying attention again.
3) Action: Ask potential customer to make a decision
This is not a time to exchange pleasantries (well you could depending on your relationship). But whatever it takes, it’s important to highlight that the decision is now solely theirs to make as you have countlessly provided credible information and demonstrations to help them make a decision. So the real trigger is to ask them to make a decision. To continue or not. Like the team at CrankWheel, you could articulate that “we’ve discussed all the different options that you have and so forth and it seems that you’re not coming to a decision and so i’d like to hear from you in the next few days to know if you’re still interested or whether it’s time for us to stop pursuing this opportunity.” And the good part about Jói’s break up message is that it has a time component, which mounts a bit of psychological pressure on the potential customer to act. Few days, one week, 24 hours are all time frames that could be used.
The benefit of having these components is that it most of the time leads to a sale and can close a long sales cycle. “In a way it also tells us that we are not spending any more time on this potential customer. We use this when we have a low cost follow up which is usually just email but when we’ve spend a significant amount resource, we will at some point make this kind of statement,” Jói reflects.
Note: This post is part of a series of learnings from my 15mins interactions with 52 tech startup entrepreneurs and founders. They share with me their biggest sales mistake, what they learned from it & how they are doing things differently as a result.
Author: Kwesi Sakyi-Gyinae
