Everybody has pain for things that excite them that they want to do. Problem
is, if there's a lot enough impact to that, they're not going to
do it. You're listening to the Audible Ready Podcast, the show that helps
you and your teams sell more faster. We'll feature sales leaders sharing their best
insights on how to create a sales engine that helps you fuel repeatable revenue growth,
presented by the team at Force Management, a leader in B to B
sales effectiveness. Let's get started. Hello, and welcome to the Audible Ready
Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel Klatt Miller. Today we are tackling that topic of
what you do when your customer goes dark when they ghost to you. Joining
me for the conversation today is Force Management facilitator Diana Shelley. Hi. Diana,
Hi there, Rachel, thanks for having me back. Great. We're
excited to have you. Excited to talk about this topic today because I know
it plagues all salespeople like we've all had this happen, right, So before
we talk it to some about some action steps of things that we can do
when this happens to us. Let's start with going through some common reasons why
customers go dark. Well, I think it's so painful when all of a
sudden we have this, especially when we're engaging with the customer and then all
of a sudden it stops. It becomes a silence. When we find out
solves ghosted. Many times, the first thing that's happened is the buyer just
either the pain hasn't been great enough to cause an impact to get off go
they and they don't see the urgency anymore, like that's something I need to
do, but it's not as important as I thought. And that can happen
for many reasons. Priorities shifted behind the scenes, or the problem they thought
was the problem wasn't the real problem. They may not even have an answer
for us, and at that point we might just be dealing with the wrong
person. And so they haven't gotten a yes internally, but they're not really
close enough to the pain, and so you've almost gotten shuffled around behind the
scenes without knowing it. The other thing that could be happening is the competition
is starting to get their attention, or if their status quo or they're trying
to build something internally, those initiatives are becoming more and more important, like
oh, let's go ahead and build to save some money. We haven't proved
our value. So it all goes back to did we ship with the pain?
Did we get to the impact of the pain? Yeah, So let's
go through some of the things that might be going on, and while we
do our due diligence figuring out why they went dark, let's start with some
things that we can be looking at. Now. First, you just mentioned
did we do enough with the business pain? Yeah? So I always say
no pain, no impact, no deal, because everybody has pain or things
that excite them that they want to do. The problem is if there's not
enough impact to that, they're not going to do it. And if you
think about it, even for us going into the weekend, we think there's
things we want to do and things we probably have to do, but our
list is probably bigger than what's going to actually happen. So the things that
are going to get us off go are the things that excite us the most,
and those opportunities or the things that are causing that much more of an
issue at home that we have to actually deal with. And it's the same
in our customer organizations. Yeah. I mean that's critically important because if there
is enough pain, you're going to be a priority, right. But along
with that quantified pain, you also want to make sure that you're talking to
the right people, that you're aligned with the stakeholder who cares about the pain.
Because you mentioned like no business or no problem, no business or phrase
you use, but it could be like not my problem, not my business.
Right. Absolutely, many times we wait too late to engage what I
call the economic buyer, or that person that has the ability to say no,
would others say yes or yes when others say no. They have the
ability to move money around as they see urgency, but we wait too late
to get involved with them. And by the time we get involved with them,
they usually have turned it over to a team of trusted advisors to start
working it, and we're trying to get involved with them, wondering why they're
not responding. Is we've waited till later in the cell cycle we have been
those people sooner find out qualify is their pain is their impact? And then
to your point, we have to make sure we're actually speaking the right language
with that person or we're going to get delegated down right, and they just
might not see you just might not be relevant anymore, and that's why they're
not engaging with you. You mentioned this next one up at the top.
The other factor right here might be the competitors, your differentiation and your customers
understanding of it. And what happens is if we think about it, we
have a customer, think about them being in the middle, and think about
us being on the right side of their ear telling them all the things that
we do differently and what makes us better. But they've got the competitor on
the left side of the ear telling them the exact same things. So who
they believe and if they get confused, then sometimes they think it's just the
whole thing's too complex, and they'll go dark on us because they're like,
that's overwhelming. I don't have the time, many our resources to even handle
that, and I don't feel like going through it. So it's key that
we articulate what we do aligning with the impact of what they're soft for.
And this isn't all fifty things we do, we're all ten things we do.
This is what did they care the most about that had impact. Now,
how do we align that solution with them in a way that makes sense
for them so that we actually can start to knock off the competitor. Yeah,
good point, good thing. And then there's also like the competing alternatives
within the company. If your customer isn't engaging with you, your solution just
might not be the priority. It's very true. We have to find out.
We always assume we do some discovery in the beginning, and then we
forget about it later on. And what happens, to your point, Rachel,
is all the competing priorities have changed and shifted, and we haven't asked
anything else. Anything changed since we last spoke. And so while they might
have been on board at one point, someone else just joined the organization with
a great idea or dollars shifted around within the organization. We weren't with the
economic buyer. We were told we got a technical win or a win,
but then someone else came along and said, no, I don't think so,
and the budget was stolen. And now they go dark because they just
don't have time to call us back or there's really no reason to. Yeah,
those are some great things for us to think through as salespeople. If
somebody is ghosting us or not engaging, take a step back and really think
about Okay, what might be going on here based on your earlier discovery,
based on reasons. We know customers go dark. So if you feel like
you might know what the reasons are, what are your action steps to get
this newly framed information in front of the customer to highlight what you might need
to highlight with them. Well, I think many times we focus on who
might have left the organization that might have been working on our deal with us,
and the problem is whether they're left or whether they're still there and they
were promoted, they're going to be focused on their next role because that's what
they're being tasked with at the time. We need to be focusing many times
on who's joined the organization because once someone's joined, it's our chance to educate
them and get them up to speed on what the problem was we were solving
for and the impact and how it may pertain to them, instead of letting
Google get them up to speed. But we don't focus on the new person.
But the new person is actually the risk because they may have the bright
idea and if they know nothing about us, they then talk the economic vibray
to going with our idea. They were, especially at the executive level,
they were hired for a reason. We have to pay attention to that because
they usually get carte blanche what they want for about eight nine months. I
call it the huntingmoon period. So we've got to get in there and get
in there quick. Yeah, those are some great action steps. We actually
have another podcast with the Diana where she talks about what happens when there's leadership
changes in your account, like how do you maneuver that? What do you
do? Also some great tips in that conversation. I'll go ahead and link
it in the show notes. Some great things to think about in this current
situation, Diana as we plan our strategy to re engage customers. Wrap it
up for us with the main takeaway you want people to have from this podcast
episode. Well, Rinchie, you said it earlier too sometimes and you didn't
say it this way, but I know you were going with sometimes we have
to take a step back to take a step forward, and so you mentioned
we got to go back. Can reassess what was the pain? Did I
get to the right person with the pain, did I articulate a large enough
impact for them to take action, and did I attach myself to the biggest
business problem not twelve business problems, because while they may tell us they have
twelve, generally they only had enough time, money, and resources to do
one or two. Did we get to those? And sometimes when we're being
ghosted, we have to have the hard conversation to find out right why that's
happening, whether it's via email or whether it's via phone, And we have
to be more direct to find out are we still in the deal, have
they already moved on? If so, we might need to qualify out or
what is shipped? We've got to make it. I call it making it
okay for them to be not okay and telling us really where we are so
that I know do I continue moving forward with this or do I need to
go ahead and move on to something else. Yeah, sometimes those difficult questions
are those straight questions help you maximize your time and you shouldn't be afraid to
ask them. Very true, Very true. I think bottom line is they
have the problem and if we've qualified it enough, they need to fix it,
whether they choose us or not. So are we saying what we need
to to connect that we can actually solve their business and their technical problem.
And lastly, I would say, if you've sent something, say something.
So if you're sensing there's a change, if you're sensing they're not all in
whatever it is that you might be sensing, you need to say something and
figure it out rather than just continuing marching along. Otherwise you'll find yourself soon
ghosted. Awesome, that's it. That's it. Thank you, Diana,
You're very welcome. Thanks for having me all right, and thank you to
all of you for listening to the Audible Ready Sales podcast. Don't forget to
check out the links and the show notes. Have a great day. At
Force Management, we're focused on transforming sales organizations into elite teams. Our proven
methodologies deliver programs that build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your
teams the ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our
strength is our experience. The proof is in our results. Let's get started.
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