Clients Ghosting? 👻 Ghost-Proof Your Sales Strategy! EP #354

Okay, I'm gonna say one word. Ghosting.

Who wants to start?

I have just so many stories of ghosting and it's one of those things that like, it's all in the follow up and the persistence, right? And I think my, my favorite, or maybe the most notorious ghosting story for me was a connection that I made. They had a video production provider for few years and they were sort of just exploring other relationships, right. And so I met with a bunch of them at their office and it went extremely well. We had a whole bunch of examples we showed that lined up really well, was just like the most perfect fit. Then serendipitously in the entire, you know, universe, and energetic. I bumped into this person at an airport with my family like two, three weeks later. We were going to the Queensland for my sister's wedding. And anyway, bumped in is like amazing. Wow, can't wait to hear from me. And then heard nothing. And it's like the worst feeling because I was like, this is, this is meant to be. It's going to be amazing. And it's like the frustration when you put yourself out there, you put your best foot forward and then they just disappear on you. Making the decision to finally step away from that arrangement or conversation is incredibly, incredibly hard. And I think one of the challenges for us when we're at a level where we're the providers of business and fuel for the companies we're running and we're maybe less on the tools and we're much more sales, business development focused is knowing when to pursue and keep pursuing and then knowing when to say, you know what this is. Diminishing returns. And cut, cut that tie there. So that's the one. I mean my team joke about all the time that this person still lives rent free in my head. And I often bring them up like a scorn, but, you know, it's the scars we all wear, right?

Oh, that's crazy. I, I reckon I've, I've got, I reckon most of the ghosting that has happened to me has been clients, actual clients that we're like part way through a project or where at the end, I reckon the craziest one was it was a 40k project and we, we got through all the shoot, multiple shoot days. They went really well.

And we cut it all together.

Looks great.

It's like a lot of content. Like it's a, like a lot of content, learning content. I can't remember five hours or something like that. And.

And then.

Sent it, no feedback.

At all.

Fully paid.

And then I got, what do you do with that? And I got back in touch. I eventually got on the phone and she was like oh, feel so bad about this. Like it's not, not doing anything unfortunate for me like what are you doing? And it has been no joke. This is still continuing. It has been over a year and we have still not received any feedback other than verbally, you know, verbal check ins every six months saying yeah, no, it's really good and I'm going to get there, I'm going to get onto this feedback thing. I've got no words. Yep, that was wild.

And you had any experience with being ghosted in professional sense?

He's ungostable.

He's two carries that.

No. Well it's funny, I, I actually have, I, I was ghosted this week. I'm currently dealing with a prospect who's in the process of ghosting me now. And so when I like to put ghosting into business terms I would classify getting ghosted as, as being in the gray area. So like my rule of thumb is get everybody out of the gray area. We don't want anybody in the gray area. So I had a client, we went through the two, two step sales call process. It was a 40 grand deal. Everything sounded good. And then they said we'll make a decision by Monday. Two weeks went by. Follow up, follow up, follow up. No answer, no answer, no answer. So I, what I tend to do, my strategy is be as polarizing as possible so they can't avoid you. So I literally said to them in my email, I said is this still, is this still a priority for you guys or have we officially been ghosted? And within like two hours I got a response and yes, but, but the, like, the topic of ghosting is actually a big deal. It's a big deal for me because it can, it can really hinder the, a business owner's mindset when it comes to sales and growth. If you've got a lot of people who you're currently being ghosted by and it can slow down your activity to go and hunt down more sales. So if, if I ever catch myself and I'm, I'm in a position where I've got like three or four deals that are pending, not really hearing back from them, but I'm like in anticipation mode.

It's very easy to slip into the mindset of oh well they'll, they'll, they'll eventually come on board and the sales will be there and then we're, we're all good.

So when you're in that anticipation mode, you're no longer then kind of going out and getting more sales. So you're kind of putting a lot of pressure on that person actually taking you on board. But the longer you're being ghosted and the longer they're in the gray area, the less likely they actually are to actually go ahead. And people ghost you for various reasons. Some reasons are valid and other reasons are they just you're no longer a priority that I want it anymore and they just don't have it within them to get, get in touch with you. But yeah, my rule of thumb is like no, I've got a literally in our CRM gray area and like the goal is get everybody out of the gray area, whatever it takes. Yeah. So it's, I think you speak really well.

You speak really well to that Andy. And I think like the thing I love about this topic is it's, it's, you can kind of sit there and pine for the lost opportunities. But I think if you build a really strong system around follow ups and nurturing those gray areas or those, those kind of cold or early stage leads, the follow up becomes, it just gets rid of all of that pressure on the ghosting side of it. So I know for us like we deal with a lot of output as far as like outreach and lead gen stuff and my job is just managing the nurture of all of those leads at whatever stage they're at. So it's systemized to a point where I now don't even have to think about. I haven't heard from Andy for a couple of weeks. It's literally in now product management.

Project management system to say like hey, contact Andy. If it's been a week since we last spoke and there's bang, bang, bang a couple hours every day and all of those follow ups and chasing ups are happening with notes of what's happened. And it can, you know, you can put this in a CRM, you can do it in project management system, whatever it is, but systemizing it. So you just take all of the grunt work out of that to know that your follow up is already, it's going to be intentional and planned out with a point to say, you know what if you just goes to me or like if this is no longer a priority, I'm going to wipe this off our, our slate just to kind of go right, I'm done with this, no more energy. But also sort of gives you that last like Hail Mary passive if they go, no, no way. We still want to work with you, you've kind of called them out on the, the nonsense that they're putting forward to you. Anyway.

Yeah, yeah, there's definitely that, that sense of that moving on email, isn't it? It's like, you know, are you no longer interested? My favorite one is I haven't heard back from you about X Project, so I'm going to assume you've gone in a different direction. If I can ever be of any help, please reach out in the future. That one almost always gets a response. But on the topic of ghosting, I'm. I've currently got three active ghosting conversations on the go and I've actually gamified it because there's one chap who we had a 90 minute conversation with Cole on a discovery call and during that call he said, oh my goodness, your ad spoke to me, the video spoke to me, everything about that conversation spoke to me. I'm having all these problems. I'm at 250, I want to get to 500. Took him through to hold the whole discovery call process and we explored all the specific things that he was having challenges with. And I said, yeah, look, if you're serious and you're committed, we can solve all of these challenges and there's a real degree of chaos in your business, but you need systems and structure and accountability. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. So like at the end of the call he said, yeah, cool, I'm just going to go and look at my cash flow. I'll come back to you tomorrow. And that was 55 days ago. And I have his number and I've followed up with him I don't know how many times, but there's gotta be, let's have a look here.

A lot of messages. I mean there's gotta be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 messages. And every now and again he's like, oh yeah, brother, sorry, you know, I've gone really slam, got a job next week. And the interesting thing about this is that it is really easy to take it personally and go, we had a 90 minute conversation. We spoke very openly and frankly about the problems you're experiencing. If it's a no, that's completely fine. But they just can't bring themselves to say no. And I think it's because if they say no, they're actually saying no to a bigger decision, which is that they're not serious about growing, they're not serious about evolving.

And yesterday I went a stage further. I thought, well, how can I wrap this conversation off? So I Recorded the loom video, which was hey name. I was sitting on my veranda stroking the dog. I said, look, it's now been about 54 days since we spoke and you said that the only thing stopping you getting over the line here was cash flow. I'm starting to think that you're just ghosting me now and that's cool. If you just came on the call for free advice, that's totally fine. But I need a yes or I need to know because I'm not going to stop until I get a yes or a no because I believe I have a moral obligation to help you solve this problem. Now that's very unique to the coaching space. I've got a couple of others just now which are ticking along and it's the same thing. But I have a friend who's also in this space and he says he just keeps sending them testimonials day after day with a link to buy.

Because you go back to marketing first principles. The guy called Dan Kennedy, who's very accomplished direct response marketer from like 20, 30 years ago, and he said, you know, you, in his, his terms, you keep emailing people totally buy, die or unsubscribe.

Now I realize that in the video production world that probably isn't quite as valuable. However, I do think a lot of first principles remain true today. There's platforms change and if someone has indicated they want to buy from you and then they don't, I think maybe culturally in Australia, there's definitely a sense of.

People don't want to say no to your face, so they'll go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, you know, later. Um, but so I guess then the next, the next point to lead on from this is how do you then systemize that, that, that next phase. If they're, if they're still in the gray area, do you guys just put them into a different nurture sequence? How, how do you, how do you get them out of the gray area? And I love your point about polarizing Andy, because it's really important.

Yeah, I love that too. We do a similar, similar thing, but we use a ninja cat.

This will only be relevant on.

On video. Can I show the ninja cat?

I reckon, I'm not sure.

I reckon I can give it a crack. Yeah, go on. Here it is. So this is the, the email and it's so good. I love it and always gets a really clear response. Right. So this is, the first line is no, no anything. It's like, are you in trouble? Hey, first name. I'm sure you got lots to do. Whatever. Don't want to be a pest, but I need a quick response. Let me know if A, you're swamped, I should leave you alone, B, you're unsure of the next steps and need time to think, or C, you're being held captive by a ninja kitten and need me to send help. If it's the last one, please don't delay your response. We're experts in hostage negotiation as well.

Oh, that's brilliant.

I'll tell you what, this ninja cat has never failed me. Like it's got 100% success rate. I've never sent that email and not got a response.

Never seen that.

It's just like it cuts through, right?

It cuts through the, the it with humor cuts through the feel bad. Or maybe they, maybe they're upset with me now because I haven't gotten back to them. That that's all probably common feelings, but as soon as I send that, they're just like, oh, I love this guy even more now.

You do realize that in sharing this with the world, that's now going to stop being effective. You're going to have to come up another, another crazy animal.

I, I throw it out to, I throw the challenge out to everyone, every video producer listening to this. If you implement this, I still think it has power. I reckon we would have to have a, a listener space of millions for that to stop working. But anyway, that's like, that's like my, my strategy. It's the polarizing thing, right? With some humor thrown in there. And then I just throw them on the, the monthly email list. Like you said, Dan, like.

It'S too valuable not to nurture, to continue nurturing leads that almost bought from you because they're the warmest ones you've got. Like other than ones that did purchase the ones that almost got there, they are the warmest, much warmer than cold ones.

We, we often do the sort of follow up side of things. Like I said, we put it into our project management system so it's all there and you don't have to think about it. And one of the most effective tips I got was to change the day of the week that you respond to them. So you either alternate every six days or eight days. If you're sort of looking to do like a weekly schedule so you're not constantly reaching out on a Monday. Monday might be their big meeting day and they just don't have time and it drops to the bottom of their to do list. So if you're following up On a Monday, then a Tuesday, then a Wednesday, then a Thursday, then Friday. Each consecutive week you just. Then, you know, your hit rate might be better because you're hitting them on different parts of the week and schedules and things like that. Um, and the other key to that too is just changing it up. Like Ninja Cats might work really well via email, but they might not be email people. They might be phone. There might be a text message or whatever. So like call them, email them. Don't be afraid to jump on the phone and follow up. Because you know, ultimately if there was some intention there, you following up to get to an answer is not going to hurt that relationship. They might just be like, hey, look, yep, sorry, now it's a no. And then you've all got an answer and you can move on. They're never going to be like, stop calling me to get an answer to this thing that we'd already discussed, unless they're completely unreasonable individuals. So alternate your days, call them, email, change up the method of reaching them to really sort of supercharge the follow up as well.

Yeah, for me it's a, it's, it's a really interesting topic, right, because ghosting, if you go a level lower or a level deeper and you think of the psychology that's at play here, it's actually about framing and positioning because the sales psychology in sales, you always want to hold the frame. You know, that's the, that's the key to negotiations. You want to own the frame. And when you give a prospect the power to like the powers in their hand to either ghost you or not, then you're, you no longer own the frame. They hold the frame. So like if you take a step further back, it's like.

I started trying to work out why are we getting ghosted? And I actually worked out as a sales process because we're leaving it too open. So our sales process is the pre, the triage calls, the pre qualifying call, the sales call. And if at that point they aren't ready to purchase, they say, I will get back to you. I say to them, great, let's schedule in next Monday at 10:30 for you to make a decision that. And if at 10:30 we get to it next week and they don't rock up, I instantly go into a nurture sequence, very quickly become polarizing and I want them out of that gray area so you, you, you lose. Like I remember you said then early on, continue the follow up. I think it's like the follow up is like the 12th section, like the 12th follow up email. Usually everybody else has given up at that point, but I've also learned that people move towards what's moving away from them as well. So there's sometimes where I've done it, where I said cool, like you, you obviously don't want to see a lighter, and all of a sudden they come chasing you and it just sort of accelerates the, the inevitable result. You know what I mean? They either they will or will not get with you, and the inevitable is inevitable. So the question I have for myself is how can I get to that inevitable result sooner rather than later? And the key is.

Owning that entire sales process. So there's like no doors of like, I'll think about it. It's like, cool. I'll give you a time frame of 30 minutes on a sales call to think about it and I'll be there. And at the end of that, if you want to keep thinking about it, I'll also get up another time for you to think about it with me. Because the moment, the moment people get off a sales call, people are always trying to find reasons not to engage with you. That, that's. They're trying to. Everybody will go into a lower version of themselves if it involves discomfort. So they'll come out and they'll find evidence in their life to be like, ah, maybe I don't need to do this, and maybe we're better off just doing what we're doing now. And okay, yeah, so you, you know, we're doing them a disservice by leaving them in that space. So.

Yeah, I love that, Andy. It's, it is so good. And you, you're spot on because I, I remember myself and what we implemented, you know, along the sales kind of journey at the start. And this will, you know, resonate with nearly everyone listening. I'll say is that you send a quote and you're like, hope for the best. You know, you don't, you don't want to put any pressure on, you know, like, you just want to be the, you know, you don't want to be the salesy guy. Like, I'm the creative. I'm going to send you a quote and you know, get back to me when you can. You know, good luck, fingers crossed, Hope you love it. And then no wonder you don't get anything back. Like, or there's, there's a massive delay and you're sitting there going, I wonder what's happening. I wonder what they're thinking. I don't know what's going on. They've missed the window of when this was going to fit in my schedule. Now I'm, you know, if it does land now, I'm screwed. So the, what you need to be doing though, and what we implemented was exactly what you're talking about, Andy. It's like I'm, I'm going to make sure that as soon as I send a proposal, I'm going to call them. As soon as I send it, I know they haven't looked at it yet, but I'm going to call them and say, hey, just checking in, I just sent it. You won't have had time to read it, but just checking that it landed in your inbox. And so that gives me the opportunity to be like, it's setting the frame, as you say it, owning the frame in that these guys know that I'm not going to leave them alone until I get an answer. And when, when they say, the next thing they say is, oh, sweet, yeah, I'll have a look at it and get back to you. And I say, great, I'm going to follow up with you. Or when do you reckon you'll be able to get have a look at it? And then if it's like, you know, too far down the track, I'll bring it forward and I'll say, well, I'll just check in in two days and see if you've had a chance by then. Or if they say, I'm going to, I'm going to look at it on Monday and say, sweet, I'll give you a call Monday, 10am to follow up and see what you thought. Rather than just letting them, you know, coast along. It's always being on the front foot and going, I am going to get an answer and I'm not going to rest until I've got one. I love that.

I think the other great thing that you've sort of reminded me of is like almost the unintentional ghosting, where I'm sure we've all had clients we've done a job for that is sort of, it's timely. It's like, hey, we've got our mid year event or something like that. And then the next year rolls on and you go, oh, we never did that job again for this client. It's, it's unintentional ghosting, but they've got their own thing going on. Right. The easiest thing to do that gives you so many brownie points is if you go, all right, we're dealing with this new client. This is an annual thing. Let's make a note in the diary two months ahead of this event for next year and then send them an email, give them a call at that point and reach a go. Hey, I just remembered, you know, you guys have got this thing coming up. How's the plans going? Can we help out? And they're like, oh my God, we were just thinking about that. Yeah, it'd be great to get you guys involved. We've had so much work happen that way and it's, it all it takes is just a little bit of thinking ahead to be like what's going to show this person is top of mind and you really care for their, their output and what they're doing. And it's that, it's the, it's the painless ghosting from there and because they just move on and do the thing. But you're, you're on a list of priority lists that could be just humongous, right? So it's up to you as the video production person to be like this is, we've got to make videos happen for clients. So let's just systemize that follow up to ensure that that client base just feels really well treated as well and they won't want to go through in the past because you become so integral to those, those operations as well.

Coolest.

The other, the other part of this is that, you know, we don't have to think too hard about this stuff if we have a system. That's why CRMs were invented. And for anyone who doesn't know what a CRM is, Customer relationship management, there's lots of different varieties. There's Trello, there's Asana, there's Monday.com, there's what are some other systems? What are you guys using for sort of system level and project management?

HubSpot, Notion, ClickUp.

Yeah, ClickUp.

We're all using different tools, but I think it's worth talking a little bit about why we use these tools. I mean go high level.

Now the tool itself, like as filmmakers we often get caught up in the what lens is that, what camera is that, what you editing on. And of course we all know it doesn't really matter. It's whatever works best for you and your team. But let's just maybe talk a little bit about why CRMs. Why do you go to the trouble of documenting, you know, inquiries have reminders, I mean what are some of the. If someone's listening to this, who's never heard of a CRM or kind of knows what they are and they're not really sure. How they should be using it or, or if they're big enough. You know, a lot of times people say I'm not, I'm not big enough. Just a one man band. Why, when did you guys start using CRMs? And what have been some of the benefits and what are some of the things that you had to overcome to kind of wrap your head around being more organized in your business?

It's a good one. I, we never used one to start with and it was just all held in my email. I didn't even use a project management software when I first started. It was literally just emails in my head. And, and what would inevitably happen is I'd have, you know, leads come in and we start conversations and they wouldn't really go anywhere or, or they were going to go somewhere and I'd forget about them because I got busy and you know, I dropped the ball on, on a really good conversation or I missed an opportunity just because I can't keep everything in my head. And I was trying to keep all of it and so, and we didn't have that much going on, to be honest. Like it doesn't have to be an overwhelming flood of work before, or leads and conversations before you're inevitably going to let something slip through the cracks of your brain. I've heard it a great quote somewhere. You might have shared it with me, Dan. The. Your brain is a great place to have an idea, but it's not a good place to keep it. So the, the project management software and a CRM is the place you keep the ideas and it's the place that helps you to keep a conversation going. And it's just, tell you what, it's the most freeing feeling to not have a whole lot of unopened or uncompleted tasks in your brain. That is just freedom and bliss because they stack up, right? They stack up and they're all like knocking at your head and your forehead going, hey, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. And you can only take so much of that. You go crazy.

Mental load is the big thing, right? Like it's, it's Caleb, you and I are dads to young kids. And it's like the mental load of life home, what's happening on the weekend. And then you go, oh. And then there's work and business and teams and jobs and inquiry. It's just like, just put that somewhere else. And then there's no question about where it's at, what's going on. But the other really good Thing is that, you know, the sooner you start using it, the easier it becomes to keep that momentum up, but also bring other people into it as you scale up and start adding team. Because if it's systemized and there's a clear way, you go about putting in conversations in your CRM or projects into your project management system and then the team gets brought into that and that's the only way they know how to manage it. It just becomes second nature for everybody and really clean and clear and just the simplest way of doing things that you wonder how you ever did it beforehand. So I'd encourage anyone listening to this that's like, yeah, I keep forgetting stuff or I dropped the ball on that one project. Like, just start with something and it doesn't need to be the solution to everything. But start putting those leads into a CRM or into some project management software to manage what you're doing. Because the sooner you start embracing it, the easier it is to continue using it and then build and scale up from that point as well.

Yeah, I think.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, the, I think for expansion at like, from like 0 to say 10 to 15k, there was no CRM. It was all pretty ad hoc. I think I was using Google Docs and just updating the Docs. But as I scaled, we scaled past 25, 30k plus, 40k plus and you start running Facebook ads and you're getting bunch of leads constantly coming through every day. And you start scaling a team.

In order to scale, you need a system because things can get really messy really quickly and you start losing money. And where it, where it really started hurting me is when we started getting a lot of leads and I'm, this is money spent out of my pocket. And they weren't being nurtured, some of the leads weren't being tracked. And I'm just like, these are potential 30, $40,000 deals that I'm just. They're coming in, registering their interest, and we're not even following up because we're caught up on other things. So now we've got a full pipeline. The team can now see every single lead that comes through each ad funnel that's come through, what stage they're at, you know, has the appointments that have been in touch with them, the notes that they've had per conversation. And it's just a really neat way so that next time I jump into the CRM and I can see people have moved across the pipeline from new lead bucket to registered their interest, to have a discussion, to email link sent I know exactly where they're at. It saves me having a conversation with the team. Hey, who is this person? I can just click on the notes. I don't have to disturb anybody else. And it just keeps things running efficiently. But in the early days, there was no appreciation for the CRM because there were no pain points. It's like, why do I need a CRM? Life's good. But I think once you start experiencing the pain point of volume and traffic coming through, you very quickly realize the importance of having infrastructure in the business. So you start then, you know, and go high level is a. We use go high level. That's like, what, 500amonth that you just. Purely just for that CRM itself. But I wouldn't go without it. Like, it's. It's an absolute necessity.

Now, you know, can I just. Because I love a good metaphor and analogy. I look at it, there's sort of three stages of a shopping list, right? You can go to the supermarket and in your head you're like, I've got to get milk, bread, eggs, sausages and whatever. And you get there and you naturally forget it. Or you walk around aimlessly through every single aisle to pick up what you need. The next evolution is writing the shopping list. But it's like bananas, milk, ice cream, eggs, vegetables. And it's like, it's out of order, but it's there. You've got a list you can refer to, and it's a great starting point. The next level to that is grouping your shopping list by the deli, the fresh fruit, vegetables, the pantry, the baby section, the pet food. And it's just like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I know exactly what I'm doing. It's the most efficient. Cut through that supermarket. That's what a CRM can do for you, and systems and processes that you can still achieve your grocery shop, but you can do it such a smarter way, and anybody can do it. If you've got your fancy shopping list. It's my analogy for the week that's so genius.

I love that.

And I think, you know, this is actually. We're running out of time here for this episode, unfortunately, but I reckon as a whole episode, that we could just deep dive into how everyone's using this in even more detail. Because it is something, you know, there's something in. In marketing called status quo bias. And status quo bias is a very fancy expression for people staying where they are and doing what they've always done. Because it ain't broke, why fix it Mentality. And I Think. What I want to leave us with here on this episode is we're here because we want to promote excellence in business running video companies. Because I believe, and I firmly believe that everyone running a video production company should be earning as much as a doctor, specialist, a lawyer, because I think that what we do is, is of immense value to, to the audience. So any. Any closing thoughts on this before we wrap this episode up? Because I think we should, we should come back and do a deeper dive on CRMs.

My only closing thought was I need a CRM for the supermarket. Because the amount of times I have spent hours. Actually, no, I take that back. My wife is now responsible for the supermarket. She doesn't even go. She orders online. So no worries, problem solved.

Any closing thoughts from you, Matt?

Yeah, I mean, when I first reached out to you, Dan, the biggest thing I kept hearing years and years ago was, systemize your business. Systemize, systemize, systemize. And now, like years later with a completely new team, those systems have gotten us so far and just simplified everything we do. I can leave the business for a week and go on a holiday or go interstate on a trip or something like that and know that everything's going to run the same way as it would if I was their hands on the wheel. But also I can check in and just see where stuff's at without kind of, hey, where's this at? Where's that at? Like, it's all systemized and built into that to just take that, that mental load off the running of the business. So I am absolutely in support of just starting and then building as you can, for sure.

I think. Any final thoughts gluing the gray area version and the CRM systems? I think the, the final thought I have is, you know, the gray area is an area where you don't want anybody in. And when you've got a lot of people on that systems is kind of be your best friend to help manage that. That process and if you're serious about growing your business systems is an absolute must.

It's.

It's an absolute must. So don't be afraid to dive into CRM world and feel free to test and break things. It's okay. I think I've tested like 8 CRMs before. I stuck with one, so. And it was the most expensive one we ended up settling for, but it's what we needed. So, yeah, good as gold.

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