Ed Gandia shares tactics for getting silent prospects to respond after you've sent a proposal. He covers follow-up timing, what to say when they've ghosted, and why most people give up too early.
Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.
Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. This episode is a little different and much, much shorter than usual. So rather than my typical 30 to 45 minute format today I'm sharing a quick tip with you. And this is part of the regular audio insights that I publish for my private coaching clients. I thought you'd find it helpful, so I wanted to send it your way. So here we go. Hope you enjoy it. One of the most frustrating things about following up with a prospect, especially one that you spent a lot of time having conversations with and you've put maybe a detailed proposal for, is radio silence. You send out your quota proposal and you follow up several times, but nothing. You just feel like, well, wait a minute, you know, what's going on? Was it me? What happened? Where did I go wrong? And you know, it could really be detrimental to your self esteem and confidence. Been there many, many times. I find that one of the things that will help get prospects to finally get back to you is to follow up with something firm, something that creates a pattern interrupt. Enough of a pattern interrupt that they just feel compelled to get back to you. It's very difficult sometimes to do that because frankly, the response or the follow up that we want to send at that point is often unprofessional. It might even be laced with profanity. But there are a couple of different ideas that you could use. That one I've used personally and one I'm going to tell you that coaching client of mine shared with me that are both very effective. So the one that I like to use on my last follow up attempt is to just let the prospect know that this is my last follow up attempt. Now I don't say it in a confrontational way. I just let them know right off the bat. Hey Jane, wanted to let you know this is my last follow up attempt. It sounds like you know, this is no longer a priority for you, which is fine. Would love the opportunity if and when it surfaces, back up or if something else comes up I might be able to help you with. But I wanted to let you know that I'm not going to keep bugging you. Wish you all the best. Here's my contact information. Take care, Ed. Something along Those lines, letting the prospect know that this is your last follow up attempt is very effective because many cases are kind of there's just no answer. Something is going on that they feel bad telling you about because it's not really helpful, or they don't think it would be really helpful for you to know because basically they're on hold and they're getting tired of telling you that. Not because you're bugging them, just because they feel bad that the answer is always the same. I'm not really sure we're on hold right now, so they opt to just go into radio silence. By letting them know this is the last attempt, you're basically telling them this is it and they can no longer use you as a snooze button. And a very large percentage of times you'll get a response. This other idea came from a previous coaching client of mine, Chris Hardy, and he read it in the book Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. Basically, his last attempt says it's just a question. Hey Bill, have you given up on this project? And of course you use it in the thread of emails that you've already sent before. That's another great pattern interrupt Chris tells me. Emailed me the other day and told me this worked like a charm the other day. Within 10 minutes a prospect who was unresponsive finally got back to him. Now here's an idea. You can actually combine these two so you can use the you know this is my last follow up attempt and with the have you given up on this project? In fact, I would probably do have you given up on this project? Wanted to let you know this is my last follow up attempt. If you have given up, that's cool. Just wanted to let you know that I'm not going to be bugging you again. So try this out. You know in desperate situations when you just want to try to get the prospect off the fence but you don't want to keep bugging them, I think you'd be surprised with how effective this approach is to finally get a response, even if it's a no.
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