Ryan Dohrn answers Randy, a media company president, about getting ghosted after sending a proposal. Instead of waiting to deliver a full proposal later, get buy-in during the meeting, send content in pieces, and follow up every three business days with voicemail and video. Create urgency with exclusivity or time-limited discounts.
Hey friends and fans, Ryan Dohrn here answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. We get a couple hundred questions a month, so we try to pick through them to the best of our ability, not duplicate ones we've had in the past. And here is a good one from my friend Randy, and Randy is a group publisher and president of a media company. So Randy asked this question: a current customer asks you to send in a proposal in the fall, which was sent. You do your standard follow-up, you follow up and follow Finally, sometime in February, March, April, you find out they're not going to do anything with anybody, including you. Nobody reached out to you. Nobody asked about the proposal. Nobody asked any questions. What went wrong in this situation? So Randy, a great question, and it happens all too often. Now, what we need to do, Randy and everybody, is we need to back up, okay? Before the proposal was submitted to them, we need to back up a little bit. Let's just say as an example that you did have an opportunity to have a meeting with that person, which Randy is not saying here, but let's do a couple scenarios. When you have a meeting with somebody, as you're presenting the proposal to them at the meeting itself, which is a problem with a lot of folks, it doesn't matter if you're selling media, software, or whatever, you leave that meeting to create a proposal, which creates another step in the problem of the process. So very rarely anymore am I leaving meetings to create proposals. Instead, I'm going with ideas and recommendations to try to get buy-in right there on the spot, which helps me avoid this situation of ghosting that's here. Okay, now because Randy's not asking that specifically as a question, let's talk about what it appears is that he sent over a proposal. Now, because the proposal was requested, what I would typically try to do is make sure that I'm piecemealing what I'm sending. I'm not just doing one big dump. What I'm trying to do is create a little bit of a conversation with them, albeit via email or whatever, to kind of make sure that as I'm massaging the conversation, I'm understanding a little bit more about their buying process, when they're going to make decisions, what their budget is, who their competitors are, and those types of things. So when someone requests a proposal from me, my standard response to them is actually going to be, hey, if you would just Answer these 3 questions for me so I can make sure what I send makes sense to you. And so that gives me a little more intel into what they're trying to do. The other thing is, because so much, Randy, of what you're selling has got digital attached to it as well, I wanna make sure that I'm putting inventory on hold for them, that I'm setting ad pages aside for them. I want there to be a psychological perception that I'm doing them a favor. When I submit this proposal to you, I'm putting this inventory on hold for you. Or I'm setting customer service people aside for you, ready to work on your project. What I want them to think is, oh gosh, they're already moving things on my behalf. And I want them to feel somewhat of a bit of a psychological obligation to me. The other thing is, I need to ask you about your follow-up. So you might have been perfect in follow-up. I mean, Randy, I've met you before. I mean, I know, I know that you're probably really good at follow-up, but follow-up for me is, every 3 business days, varying the subject line that I'm sending, making sure that I'm using voicemail to drive an email response, all of those different types of things, avoiding saying things like, hey, checking in on you. I mean, there's just so many other things that you can potentially do. So if you're running into this a lot, you've really got to be asking yourself, what is my sales process? What does my follow-up process look like? What have I done in the process of presenting the proposal To make sure I'm doing everything I can to make them feel really obligated. The other thing you can do is offer exclusivity, offer a category specificity. You could offer category exclusivity. You want to put discounts in play, if you might, that say, hey, this discount is going to expire if I don't hear from you. I mean, those types of things. Now, one final thing. This is kind of a long listener question, but it's a good one, and I'm happy to respond to it. You also wanna use video in the mix. Be using video to present your ideas, using video in follow-up. I'm a big fan, as a lot of you know, of tools like Loom or Vidyard to do that type of follow-up. So Randy, really common situation, a lot of steps before the proposal was sent that maybe could have helped with that. But I hope that gives you a gentle idea or a general idea of how I try to handle not being ghosted. A lot of it is just in controlling a lot of that follow-up as well. So Randy, everybody, great question. Thank you. Thanks so much for sending them in. Hey, keep your questions coming. ryan@ryandohrn.com. Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. This is a great job. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. All right, we'll see you next time.
