Ryan Dohrn explains why prospects ghost after meetings: sellers are too nice, calls don't force a yes/no/maybe decision, and there's no plan for missed follow-ups. He recommends using a three-item agenda, explicitly framing the outcome at the call's end, and pre-agreeing how to reconnect if someone goes dark.
What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Keep those questions coming. We get a lot of questions. I love to get them. And also, do me a solid if you would. Give the video a like and subscribe to the YouTube channel. It lets YouTube know that we're doing good things out there for all of you. All right, next question comes from Taylor in LA, and I think that Taylor in LA, that's actually in Los Angeles and not in one of my favorite states of Louisiana. So Taylor from Los Angeles, the question that you sent in is, I'm getting ghosted all of the time. So I have great meetings, people seem really interested, and then they completely go dark. Your help is appreciated. So Taylor out there in the City of Angels, this is a super common problem. And the good news is I'm pretty sure that I've got a Fix for you. All right, typically when somebody gets ghosted, there's one of three things in play. One is you might be getting ghosted because people are afraid to say no to you because you're really nice. People don't like saying no to nice people. So what you might need to do then is number two, and that's when you're hosting meetings with your customers, make sure you're vividly clear on the yes. No, maybe scenario of decision-making. Now a lot of sales trainers would tell you, don't ever give somebody the option to say, I need to think about it, maybe, or no. Only give them the option to say yes. Alright, so let's, let's set that aside for a second because that's kinda bonkers. We know that people don't play that game anymore. So the scenario is yes, no, maybe, and Taylor, this is how I set it up. Here's how my sales call would go. I'd say, hey Taylor, thanks for the 20 minutes. Do you still have 20 minutes? Taylor says yes. Hey Taylor, there's 3 things that I'd love to cover with you today. Again, there's that number 3 again. I always put 3 things in each agenda. The 3rd thing in the agenda— well, let me give you all 3. The first on my agenda is, Taylor, I'd love to talk to you and share some success stories of what others have done to be successful with us. The 2nd is I'd love to give you pricing. I'm gonna be very transparent with the pricing. And then the third thing is, is what I like to call yes, no, maybe. At the end of our conversation, you might say yes. Awesome. That's great. You might say no, which is always going to disappoint me. But if you say no, I'm going to respect your no and I'm not going to beat you up about it. The third thing, which is super common, because we're asking you for some pretty good money to advertise with us or to do business with us, is you might need to think about it. And if you do need to think about it, I completely understand. I'm not going to play any games with you. Let's set a time to follow up, give you time to make your decision, and then we'll get back together and figure it out from there. So what you've done in that scenario, Taylor, is you've made it a lot easier for somebody to feel comfortable with you. Feel comfortable. If the answer is no, just tell me no. I mean, I don't want to get a no, don't get me wrong, but I prefer a yes. But just tell me no if the answer is no. You don't need to drag this on, and you don't need to drag on the pain for yourself either. Now, so the first thing is you might just be really nice. Okay, that's cool. The second thing is it's highly likely that on the sales call itself you're not handling the yes, no, maybe scenario. Don't forget, at the end of your sales call, is it a yes, is it a no, is it a maybe? You talked about it at the front, nothing wrong with talking about it, you know, really at the end. But the third is planning to miss each other. This is not taught by anybody other than me, although I know someone's gonna steal it out there. You know who you are, you were on Facebook, you steal all my ideas and you put your own name on it. And it's okay because guess what? There is nothing better, the fondest form of flattery is when someone copies you, right? It is okay. The third thing on it is you've gotta be vividly clear about missing each other. So I'll say as an example, hey Taylor, if we miss each other, what is the best way for me to reconnect with you? Is it sending you text messages? Is it sending you, you know, donuts? Is it a carrier pigeon? Is it smoke signals? What's the best way for me to follow up with you if we miss each other at the scheduled time that we're set to follow up? What I'm trying to do is psychologically set them up to understand that if they don't come to this meeting, if they don't do the follow-up meeting with me, there are things that I'm gonna do to reach back out to them. Sometimes I might even drop into their business. The most common way that I follow up is email. The second most common way is text messages. I typically don't call people over and over again. Recognize, Taylor, and everybody that's out there, sales is not easy. If it was easy, everybody would do it. You have to have a strategy to almost everything that you do, and I know that strategies, it's typically a downer, it's like boring. Ryan, I just wanna live my best life. I get it, but salespeople without strategies typically do okay. Salespeople with strategies typically kill it out there, are exceeding their sales goals, and they're loving their job every day. So Taylor, I hope that helps you get ghosted just a little bit less, but hey, Uncle Ryan here gets ghosted too sometimes, and I feel like I'm pretty good at this job. Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. It's a great career, friends. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. Keep your listener questions coming, ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, if you need me to come to your office and pump up your team, you need me to come speak at your national sales conference, reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. Thanks, Ryan. All right, get out there and sell something and make us all proud, would you?
