In this short coaching segment, Ryan Dohrn responds to a listener, Patty from San Diego, who struggles with losing control of post‑meeting follow‑up when prospects say they’ll call back but never do. Ryan explains that the root problem is handing the follow‑up to the prospect. He advises salespeople to seize the moment at the end of a call: pull out their phone, propose a concrete 5‑minute follow‑up slot (e.g., Thursday at 2:30) and lock it into the calendar immediately. If the prospect replies “I’ll call you,” Ryan uses a gentle psychological framing—acknowledging busy schedules and positioning the salesperson as respectful of the prospect’s time—to push for a brief scheduled call instead. He encourages a bold yet friendly tone, suggesting a quick text as a “veiled threat” if the call is missed, reinforcing the salesperson’s control without being aggressive. Throughout, Ryan emphasizes proactive, controlled follow‑up as essential to moving sales forward and avoiding being left hanging.
Chapters
Hey friends, Ryan Dohrn, your global sales coach and marketing coach here working with your listener questions. I love to answer these questions sent to ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, next question here comes from Patty in San Diego. Ooh, love San Diego, always 72 degrees and sunny according to Ron Burgundy there in San Diego. All right, Patty's question. I tend to lose control of the follow-up after meetings. People tend to say they're going to call me back and they don't. What should I do? All right, Patty, great question. Now, what's happened is you've let them control the follow-up. Patty, we don't do that. We don't do that. At the end of your sales call, probably somebody, if they don't agree to buy, they're going to say, hey, I need to think about it. No problem. You can read any sales book you want, use any closing technique you want. When people say they need to think about it, sometimes they just need to think about it. All right. So what I do, pull out my phone and let's just pretend I'm talking with you, Patty. All right, Patty says to me, hey Ryan, I need to think about it. No problem. Pull my phone out. Let's get a, let's get a follow-up meeting to put on our calendar right now. You got your phone? Just take control of the situation. Got your phone? Okay, great. Let's schedule that Thursday, 2:30-ish. 5 minutes is all that I need. Now, Patty, they might say to you, no, I'll call you. Now that's the worst one. I will use a little psychology on them. I'll say, you know, Patty, I appreciate the fact that you're going to call me, but let's A lot of times you'll get busy, I'll get busy, and I don't want to be one of those salespeople that's going to call you like 50,000 times and send you 100,000 emails. I don't want to have that kind of relationship with you. So if we can just get a quick 5-minute call set up, if your yes is yes, if you say no, that's okay. If you need more time, not a problem. I just like to always control the follow-up. Now, you don't want to be brash, but Patty, you might have to be just a little bit bold. Okay, be bold. Don't be afraid. Take a deep breath. Most people are okay setting it up. But if you set up that meeting on your phone, you will not get stood up as often. Now, one little final tip, and that is you might say— if I would say to you, Patty, if I was having that meeting, if for some reason we miss each other, I hope you don't mind, I'm going to drop you a text. Okay, so that's sort of like a little veiled threat, so to speak, but you're still being friendly about it. And Patty, that's the way I control the follow-up. I do my very best. On every single meeting. So Patty, uh, in San Diego, thank you so much for that listener question. All right, send in your questions, ryan@ryandohrn.com. Happy to answer them here, happy to answer them on the podcast as well. And just really appreciate all of you watching all these tips, and I hope you find them helpful. All right, if I can be of help to you, your team, reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. And don't forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody be doing it, and they're not. So we're a little bit crazy out there, but friends, we found careers that will feed our families for a lifetime. All right. God bless you. We'll see you next week. Take care. Okay.
