Cracking the Ghosting Code: Why Leads Ignore You (and How to Stop It)

Welcome to Startup with Feras episode, and we are live, and thank you for tuning in. So what is happening in the world of entrepreneurship? You've sent the emails, you've called, you've followed up. Politely, consistently, and strategically, and still nothing. No reply, just silence. It is frustrating. I've been there, especially when you know you could offer the client a lot of help. But if you don't fix this, ghosting will keep— or will keep killing your close rate. You won't be able to close customers. And if you don't have customers, there's no revenue. And if there's no revenue, there's no business. So today we're going to crack the ghosting code so you finally start getting responses, book calls, and also close deals. See, when I first started out, I was closing maybe at 1 out of 15 or even 20 proposals. Fast forward to when we became profitable and hit 7 figures and later 8 figures, we were closing 1 in 3. So instead of 1 in 15, we're now in 1 in 3, which was above— was and is above industry average depending on what stats you look at. And I've also helped over 100 founders and freelancers Do the same thing. And that is what I want to share with you today. We'll cover why leads ghost and how to stop triggering that, how to rehumanize outreach without sounding desperate, and the mindset shift that turns silence into dialogue. Now, before we get into that, uh, just a couple administrative items. If you have any question, On today's topic on ghosting and getting back to leads and engaging leads or anything to do with entrepreneurship, leave a comment, email me. If it's something personal you don't want to share with the entire world, you can email me at feras@startupwithferas.com and Feras is spelled like my first name on the screen here, F-E-R-A-S.com, so startupwithferas.com. I'll look at— I look at every email I get. And if it's something confidential, of course, I will keep it as such and I will get back to you. But I'd love to hear from you, the challenges that you're facing, the obstacles that you are struggling to overcome, and also the wins, small wins, big wins. I'd love to hear from you from the community because when I have these live streams, I address a business topic and then I answer questions we get from you all. So don't hesitate to reach out. I'm more than happy to help. I've built, I've built several businesses, a couple to 7 figures and one to 8 figures that we later sold to Dentsu, the global media giant. And I'm on a mission to help people who want to get into entrepreneurship, or those who got into entrepreneurship and they are now stuck. I want to help you get unstuck and help you start strong and grow and scale and reach that dreams that you have. All right, enough on the administrative stuff. Now let's get into today's topic. Why leads— why is it that leads ghost us? And, and I want to remember, I remember a video I did, I think a couple weeks ago, on rejection, and that rejection is redirection. So in a way, in business, in life in general, rejection is a feature not a bug. We want to get used to being rejected, but in the same breath, I don't want to stay in this rejection mode forever. We want to learn from rejections. We want to refine our pitches, maybe reframe our niche, redirect our energy to more qualified leads, but we don't want to— we don't want to get stuck in this rejection mode. I want you to close deals. So let's talk about this, this why go— why prospects ghost us. There are a lot of reasons. Some are legitimate, some you cannot control, and others you absolutely can. The ones you can't control, for example, your lead is on maternity leave, so it's going to take longer to find the next person who will be— you'll be interacting with. Or maybe it's a holiday season, or maybe there's some internal politics going on within the company that you are pitching to. So some things you cannot control, and that is normal. And sometimes the clients need more time. That's legitimate. Sometimes they're waiting on a budget approval from their VP or their CEO. That is all understandable. But a lot of times there are things that are under our control that we don't do optimally. So for example, and this is the first one, the first reason why leads ghost us, and it's the big one, especially for those who are pivoting from employee to entrepreneur, from technical expert to business owner. Most of these folks who are getting into consulting, they sound robotic. Their offers their pitches and their conversation starters, they sound robotic, too technical, too formal, too focused on their process, their solution, and not the client's pain points, not the client's wants and desires. And this is— there's a reason behind that. We can dig deep into psychology, the psychology of that in another episode, but there's something called the curse of knowledge. And this is what Chip and Dan Heath in their classic book Made to Stick— I don't know, I read this 20, maybe 5 years ago, it's a good book still— they describe the curse of knowledge as the arch villain of communication. It's what happens when you know something so well that you forget what it's like not knowing it. And a lot of times if you are in HR consulting or IT consulting, or if you're a financial advisor, you start— we all start dropping this, the jargon and the technical terms, and, and we feel good that we know this stuff cold, but we're losing the client. So if you're— when you have this, you're not aware of the curse of knowledge. In a way, you're tapping a rhythm a rhythm in your head that makes— it makes perfect sense to you. You understand it. You understand technology. You understand, uh, if you're in technology, you understand HR and performance reviews and employee feedback and goal settings and all that because that's your field. You understand automation and workflows if you are in a process-oriented consulting area. So you understand all that, but the person across the table, across Zoom, on the phone, on the other side of the phone, they just hear noise. So if you're getting glazed-over looks while you're pitching, while you're speaking with, with potential leads, that is your signal. You're tapping. You are not connecting. So instead of explaining what's in your black box, whether it's again API consolidation or performance frameworks, whatever your area of consulting is, instead of doing that and instead of flooding your client with too much information too soon, here's the shift. Start translating that technical depth into what the clients actually care about. And what do businesses in a B2B setup, and this applies to business-to-consumer, B2C as well, what do people care about in a business? They want to make more money, they want to reduce costs, so profitability, they want to maybe increase customer satisfaction, increase employee retention, they want to have Peace of mind. So these are the outcomes of what we do as consultants. We're helping solve a problem. We're not—we don't want to be very focused on the—the how the sausage is made. We want to make sure it's cooked well and it tastes amazing, right? So so redefine the goal. The client does not understand. does not need to understand the code. They need to believe that you, the subject matter expert, the consultant, they want to believe, the clients need to believe that you understand them. So again, most people don't care, don't know, don't want to know about how the sausage is made. Now there are a few who would like to know, the do-it-yourselfers, the DIYers, Okay, get technical with this segment of your population, of your audience, but for the rest of us, we just want to know that it— this— whatever the service you're offering, it does address my problem and it's something that I can afford and something that will help me again have some peace of mind. That's really what matters. So focus on outcomes. On benefits to the client, to the organization, and not on the features of your service, the features of your product, the features of what you are offering. So that is, I think, especially for those who are just pivoting from corporate or maybe they were laid off recently and they're moving to entrepreneurship, this is one of the main issues that I see. And I speak with 2 to 3 founders every week, and I hear it all the time, and I get on these calls, and they're asking me, and they're asking, so what do you do? What do you offer? And they get into the deep end so quickly that I get lost. So in a very polite way, nice way, I stop them and say, hold on, hold on, just reframe this. Give me— tell me how you benefit your client, who your client is, and how you benefit them. So that's, again, that's probably the number one issue that those who are about to turn, about to pivot from employment to entrepreneurship, they face with this because they're subject matter experts. So work on thinking about the client, about their needs, their wants, their pain points. But there are other reasons why leads ghost us. One, again, I'm not referring to the legitimate reasons, external factors or things that are beyond our control, right? Those are there, acknowledge them, but you don't have control over them. But another reason that's under our control and why leads go silent, one is you disappear and you disappear after the first no or the first Hesitation, my friend, if you look at many stats on HubSpot and other data sources, it takes anywhere from 5 to 7 to 8 to 12 follow-ups before a sale is completed. Now I'm not saying you nag. I'm not saying you call the clients at 8 and you text them at 8 PM at night on a Friday night. No. There is, it's to be done with care, with professionalism, and I'll talk, I'll go over a few things you can do in the next section, but you do not want to disappear after the first no, or if you send a proposal and you think this is the end of it, I want you actually to watch, I have a long video, the complete guide on writing winning proposals. The proposal, is not the, the, the end of, of, of your sales process and sales cycle. It's one step along the way. So follow-up, disappearing after sending the proposal or after, after, um, after meeting maybe with a lead and, and give, give, giving them a quote verbally, maybe that is— that's not the end of it. You're still— you still have to sell, you still have to educate, you still have to show that you are interested in solving their problems. So that's the second thing is you're disappearing after that first no or first hesitation. The third one is the client or the leads, they don't feel an urgent problem to solve. So part of sales is, and again, I think if you follow this channel, you know, I'm not into this aggressive, pushy, sleazy way of selling. You have to do it with— your reputation is important. You might win a deal if you are aggressive and put someone under pressure, but you won't— you will not win a relationship. You will not win a referral, someone who will refer clients to you. So, but at the same time, it's part of Your consulting is to educate the client on the potential issues they'll have if the problem is not solved. So let's say you're an HR consultant and you, you have a couple of calls, couple of conversations with the client, with the lead, and you notice that they don't have a mechanism, a systematic way to do performance reviews and get employee feedback and provide provide feedback to and guidance to employees, and they're suffering from retention. Employees are just not— they get hired, a few months down the road they leave. So you proposed a performance review system and you perform— you included in your proposal some training, some handholding to the managers and to the employees, a full package, a full service. But then the CEO decided, you know, this is not the time, budget is tight, we'll do it next year. So what I want you to think about it is to make sure in your— not just in your proposal, in your conversations with the CEO or maybe the COO or the person that you are interacting with, highlight the urgency of the problem. So if you don't implement, in this case, if you don't implement a performance review system, then you will be losing employees, and it takes 3, 4 times as much to hire, to find and hire another employee, and it impacts the morale of the rest of the team members. So start to highlight, or not start, in the sales process, highlight the urgency of the issue. Again, don't make things up, but you know, you're the technical person, you're the HR consultant, you've seen situations where if there's not a solid performance review system and a feedback loop between the team and their management and management and the team, things productively will not be at peak, morale will be low, employee retention will be an issue, client satisfaction is impacted, all of that as a result of not taking care of the team, right? So it's part of your job as a business owner now. Yes, you know, it's our consulting, but you're a business owner and part of your job is to educate the client on the importance of implementing your solution sooner than later so that they can, again, save money, make more money, and increase client satisfaction and employee retention. So that is the third one. The next is on— the next reason why leads go silent is that sometimes there's budgetary uncertainty or shifting priorities. Now, again, this could be way totally out of our control, but in a lot of cases I've seen lack or slow responsiveness. You meet a client on a Tuesday, 2 weeks later you follow up, and then 2 weeks later you send a proposal, and then you wonder why they're not getting back to you. If you ignited that fire in them, if you rekindled that fire and, and they see the, the need for your solution, you got them interested in what you offer, you have to follow up on that fairly quickly. And I have this 2-1-2 rule. If you follow our channel, you probably heard this before, but basically the 2-1-2 rule is 2— the first 2 is respond. You got to respond within 2 business hours. If they give you a number of time slots to meet, pick the first one and then send the proposal within 2 days. Now depending on the complexity of your service, depending on other factors, you might do a 4-2-4. It doesn't matter. I use 2-1-2 as a framework for me, and then if it takes me a week to write a proposal because I'm selling something that is $100,000, that's fine, but have a rule in terms of responsiveness to calls, to emails, in terms of when to schedule meetings, and also in terms of when to send proposals. That's your benchmark and stick to it. So back to my example, if it took you a month to send a proposal, who knows what happens in this one month. People get fired, get hired, people change roles, things happen, other priorities come up. So if you are not responsive, a lot of things could happen. And then the importance of what you offer and the solution that you've offered, that will— that just will not be top of mind for any of your— for your contact or your point of contact or their management. So a lot of times if you stay, you want to be very close to the contact. You want to do response, be very responsive, and I'll give you some tips on what to do in terms of how to follow up properly in the next section. But again, these shifting, these shifts in priorities a lot of times happen Because we are slow in, in being close to the client and being responsive to their needs. And then a couple more here. Then the other reason why— the other reason why leads go silent is that we don't build an emotional connection and we don't establish trust. The trust is not built yet, and that is— that's a problem. That's a big problem because people buy from people. And as a consultant, you want to establish authority and credibility. You're the subject matter expert, you've solved similar problems, you know the stuff cold, all that good stuff, right? And then you want to have some chem— establish some chemistry as well between you and the lead. So it's not just about a technical solution, it's not about a product, pricing. These are important. The solution has to solve the problem. The pricing has to be what the client can afford and all that good stuff. But you want to build a connection. It's not— especially in consulting, especially in B2B, business-to-business, especially when things— there's a long sales cycle. It takes you— you have to invest in that relationship. You have to understand not just the technical problem and the solution, but also like what is motivating this person to hire a consultant. Maybe they're just so overwhelmed and they have so many deliverables and they want to trust someone, and, and you want to then— and they just want to outsource this, this task to someone and they can have some peace of mind. So you then have to highlight how you can take that off of their plate and give them that peace of mind, right? Maybe the person you're hiring, the person who's hiring you is looking to, the project that they want you to help them with is going to be part of their performance review and they want to make sure the project gets done on time so that, so they can go and add it to their list of accomplishments. So the time— I'm not making this stuff up. This is— you're dealing with people, and people have a whole lot, you know, a number of motivations. So yes, they want to solve the problem for the company, but there could be other factors here at play. So understand why the client is talking to you, what's important to them, and make sure you understand it at the emotional level and give them that authority, be able to present that authority and that credibility and that you are the right fit for them. And then the last one here before we go to the next section is sometimes you get ghosted because you're not dealing with the decision maker and there's a whole thing in sales about how to pass, how to bypass, move around gatekeepers and how to get to decision makers. You can check the proposal The Ultimate Guide to Writing Winning Proposals, video on that, but quickly here is that to the extent that you can, you want to interact with the decision maker. Sometimes a CEO will assign the task of finding a vendor to one of their managers. That's understandable, but especially in a smaller company, you find reasons for you to connect with the decision maker so that you can present to them, you can connect with them, and you can understand what's really driving them to allocate budget and time to get this problem solved. So we talked about the robotic approach to pitching, that too technical, too formal, you're not listening, you're not highlighting the outcomes, so that was I think one of the big ones and then we listed a number, I listed a number of reasons why leads go silent. Now, the next section is on how to rehumanize outreach, things you can— tactical things you can do to overcome these challenges and these problems that we face in terms of getting ghosted, but before I do that, let me just pause for a second and again thank for those of you who joined us later. We are talking about this topic of cracking the ghosting code and how to— cracking the ghosting code and helping you overcome this issue of clients not getting back to you despite all the great work you're doing, despite you believing that the solution you offer has a ton of value for the customer, but you're still not hearing feedback or hearing at all from your clients. So let's go over some specific tactics you can apply to improve that response rate, okay? And the first one is, and again, for those of you who joined us later, if you have a question, you have a comment, you want to share a quick story, add it in the comments, and if it's something very personal, something maybe you don't want to put out in the public, you can email me at Feras, F-E-R-A-S, @startupwithferas.com. I look at all the emails and I will get back to you. and help you overcome that challenge that you are facing. All right, how to rehumanize outreach. The first one, and this is especially important if you are new, new to business, new to sales, new to consulting, focus on the warm network. You have a gold mine, people around you, people in your LinkedIn network, people you meet at the gym, people you went to school with, people, friends and family. So if you're struggling with doing outreach and cold calling and cold emailing, I'm not saying these are bad things to do. I'm just saying initially, if you're just starting out, focus initially on your warm network, right? People, As I said earlier, people buy from people, and people buy from people whom they trust and they believe they're credible. So when you reach out to your network, especially those you've left a positive impression on, that trust is established. So one of the conditions here, that trust is already established. So now you want to see if what you offer is a fit for what they're looking for, and maybe if you reach out to your network and they don't have a need for what you offer, they can point you to someone in their company or in their network who could benefit from what you offer, so that is, in my experience and working with so many founders, this is 90% plus most, if not all of the first clients for, for small businesses who just start out, the first clients are, are going to come from your network. Again, because the trust is established and people want to help out people they know. So your homework, what I want you to do is you go on LinkedIn and you go to settings, and there's an option to download, to export your network, all the emails, their titles, and then go through this, their titles, and it gives you a couple of additional pieces of information, so go through that network and filter it, maybe have 2 segments, one on those who are very close friends and people you know very well and you can lean in on, and maybe those that you haven't connected with in a long time, you met at a conference a long time ago, so separate that list, that warm list, that network into a couple of categories and then put them in a CRM, If you have a CRM, if not, put them in a spreadsheet and I have a DIY CRM. I'll include the link in the description after this call, after this livestream, but put them in a list and start doing some outreach. So not everyone will get back to you. That's just part of it. People are busy. People have a lot going on. They don't want to talk about business at this point, but if you do this outreach, You're likely to get some responses, and then especially close friends and people who know you well, they'll give you feedback about your offer, about your pricing, about other things that others might not. So that's the number one thing. The number two thing is the unscalable actions you have to make. So later when you are established, You can use automation. I want you to use automation because that's the way to scale and you can blast emails and do all sorts of things in terms of marketing and outreach, but initially skip the automation step or skip the automation tools and start— let me back up here. So skip the automation tools and start sending very personalized, highly personalized and handcrafted messages. The more you personalize, the more likely the person will find that email relevant and the more likely they'll get back to you. This will take time and as you grow, it'll be hard to personalize every message you send out, but initially and if you're struggling with sales, you have time on your hand, So you want to start personalizing and do things that are unscalable. So it could be that you offer— that's one idea in terms of personalizing your outreach. And if you've— let's say you've met 20 people over the last quarter in different events, right? And you took some good notes on what these people do and the problems they have. So instead of sending just your newsletter, you can send a personalized email to each one of these 20 people you met and using the notes that you captured after the events where you met them, you can go ahead and customize that email based on their needs and where you can help them with that need. And it looks like we have— We have someone here. Yeah, thank you for joining. I appreciate you adding— okay, you have an analytics solution. Okay, good to know. All right, okay, so, so that's one thing in terms of doing unscalable things. It's easy to just send it— send an automated email. It takes longer, takes more effort to personalize emails, but they work better and they work more effectively. So do that. The second thing you can do here is that you can offer some free consulting, or maybe a free mini audit, or you can do a free training. Again, this is not very scalable. As you grow, as you scale, you can't afford to do a lot of this free stuff. But initially, and if you're stuck, you're not selling, then you have to do something. You have to think outside the box, and you have to do things that you wouldn't normally, you know, otherwise do. So offer either free consulting, free training, highly discounted rate. Tell them— don't just offer it for free. Say, I'll do this. If you're happy with the results, I'd appreciate a testimonial or maybe a case study. A lot of companies, a lot of companies would do that. Maybe you can do that for a nonprofit. So find an opportunity to demonstrate that you are the expert, the expert that you claim you are, right? And then from there, you do this mini audit. They see the value, they see the potential impact on their business. Again, increased revenue, reduced cost, improved client satisfaction. They see one of these, they see the results of your work leading to one of these, these business goals, and then they're likely to, to have you do more for them, and they benefit more, and then you close that deal. So doing some unscalable things is not a bad idea, especially if you're stuck in terms of sales and you're not getting input back from people. The 3rd tactical thing you can do, and that should be part of your DNA, is that you don't send emails, follow-up emails that say, I'm just checking in. I am just checking in should not be in your dictionary. I know it's easy. You, you spent a lot of time, you spent a lot of time developing, you spent a lot of time writing this email to the lead and, and you included how your solution can help them out and all that good stuff. That's great. When you follow up on that email, always, always, always Add value. You can link to a recent case study that you've done, maybe a blog post, maybe a thoughtful LinkedIn post, maybe an industry report, maybe some news you've heard about their competitors or their industry or some new regulation, whatever the case might be in your follow-ups, always, always, always add value. Just, just following up is not a good thing. People are sick and tired of templates and things that are AI-generated, and I'm all for using AI. Use AI effectively and the right way, and I include that in a lot of the videos on, on, on best practices on using AI intelligently. But people are— they see, they smell AI right away. So if you have a template that you send to clients, you're not personalizing, and then when you follow up, it's just, hey, have you received my previous email? It doesn't show that you care a lot about them and you're not investing in that relationship, or maybe they might not perceive it as negative, but it will be definitely positive and you will get more points if you're adding more value in every interaction. So keep that in mind, especially initially when you don't have an email list of 3,000 people where you cannot— it's not humanly possible to personalize 3,000 emails, especially if just yourself, but so a lot of— in those cases, yes, you send mass emails and you try to make them maybe segment the list based on 2 or 3 different maybe segments of your clients. Yes, you can do that, but initially when when you have time and you have— you're not busy delivering because there are no sales, then you can spend more time on personalizing the email and also on adding value in every interaction. All right, and then there's one more thing that you can do, and that is part of Part of this, this whole sales process and part of being, being a business owner is it's really, it's, it's, it's a mind shift. It's a mindset shift. So when you worked in corporate, think of it as your— it's a cruise ship. It's moving in a certain direction, whether you're there or whether you're not. The cruise, cruise ship is moving. And typically you're told what to do, even if you have— even it's a great environment, a great company, there's still some general direction on what to do, right? You can be very creative, you can take initiative, that's all great. But in a corporate, in a bigger company, the ship is moving and you're on the ship and doing what you're supposed to be doing. When you are a business owner, when you are an entrepreneur, it's not a cruise ship anymore. It is a rowboat. And then you have to be ready to row. You need to be ready. You need to have oars. You need to have, you know, take care of the boat, all that good stuff. You have to study the ocean. It's you. And then without building the muscle of rowing, in this case, sales and marketing and understanding that it's on you to solve the problem. And the problem here is that people are ghosting us. This is the problem that you are solving for your own business. So the owner, the business owner, in a way, instead of being told what to do, you're hunting for a problem to solve. And what I want you to take from all of this is that— I want to tie it back to what I said earlier— that silence doesn't mean rejection. Silence is an invitation for you to be super creative on how to follow up and reengage the client and also persist. So, so you can think about it. I sent, you know, 20 emails and no one, no one replied. And I'm burnt out. I'm, you know, I'm burned out and I'm not going to do this anymore. This is not— I'm not cut for entrepreneurship. That's one mindset. The other mindset is I sent 20 emails, no one got back to me, let me examine what happened. Maybe the subject line wasn't that exciting, it wasn't that engaging, maybe the offer I had, maybe the formatting of my email just wasn't very professional, right? And then over time, you start looking at what you can improve. If I sent that first batch of emails and those follow-ups with the people I met in my— the last conference I attended, and I didn't get any response back, well, did I follow up? Did I follow these best practices that Feras mentioned in this video? And when I did, did I see an improvement in response rate, right? So you have to, as a business owner, As an entrepreneur, you're hunting for problems to solve because no one else will solve for you. You can learn from others. You can obviously follow my channel and learn about tips and strategies, how to start and how to grow and how to scale your business, 100%. And there are other— there's great information on YouTube online that you can tap into. But at the end of the day, it's on you to turn these problems into opportunities for you to figure out how to solve. So don't take silence as rejection. It is really an invitation to clarify, to follow up, and to be very creative in how to reengage a client. It's difficult. I'm not saying it's easy, but if you follow these best practices, it'll be easier. And I think I always say this, if entrepreneurship was easy. If it were easy, anyone would have done it. As a matter of fact, 62% of adult Americans want to be their own bosses. They have this business idea, but only 9 or so percent take action and turn this into a business. So it's on you as an entrepreneur to learn and then to apply. See, education is— learning is education plus application. So, so What I want you to do is, this is your homework, is by next week, by the next livestream, find 100 contacts from your LinkedIn profile, from your phone list, contact list, from memory, sit down, jot down all the people in your network that you potentially either have a need for what you offer or they, they can connect you with others who can benefit from what you offer and then start reaching out to them. And if you're not sure how to reach out to these leads, what I want to do is here, and I'll share with you, let me go here and share on my channel, just so you have this information right here. I have a specific video right here. The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business in 2026. I want you to check out this video. It is a 52-minute video, but I go through the exact steps, step by step, on how to start and build your consulting business. So if you're not sure how to reach out to people and then what messages, what to say to these people, I have all of it here in this video, and I also share the specific templates you can copy and paste and then personalize, you can customize for your own needs. So that's what we have, that's what I have for today. I'll see if we have a couple of questions. I think we're good. If something else comes to mind and you're watching this later or you're listening to this stream later, don't hesitate to reach out. You can follow this channel at startupaffairs.com on YouTube. You can connect with me on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, and you can email me directly at feras@startupwithferas.com, and I'll be more than happy to answer your question, and then don't forget, share with me your obstacles, your challenges, and I'd love to hear from you about your wins, small wins and big wins. See you next time. Thank you, Feras.