What to do if you're getting ghosted and need a win this week.

For small business owners who live off the money they make, getting ghosted is a huge problem, especially if you thought the meeting went well, and your check is on the way.

Tell me if this sounds familiar…

It’s the middle of the month.  So, I asked my client “where do you see yourself finishing the month”.

She said “I don't know. A few of the sales I thought I had aren't calling me back, so I don't know”.

In our world this isn’t uncommon, especially if you're the type of person who keeps “your word” and doesn't believe in wasting other people’s time. However, if you aren’t particularly good at asking the right questions in your appointments...people who don’t keep their word can waste a lot of your precious time.

My response:  “why do you think they aren’t calling you back”?

After a long sigh and eyeroll then she responded, "I don’t know. What do you think it is”?

Rather than play “Mr. know it all" and jump to conclusions, I decided to focus on her meeting notes, then work through our “before they leave” checklist. 

Because this is her life not just her business, and I do my best to respect that and her at all times.

So, here's some questions from our "before they leave” checklist…

• Did you make sure they know you can help them with their problem?

• Did you determine if they needed your help right now or a few months from now?

• Did you make sure they knew why you're a better fit “for them” than the cheaper option.

• Did you confirm with them when your next communication was going to happen and why? Because you don’t want customers making the “why are they calling me” face.

• Did you lay out what they needed to do and what you were going to do before your next meeting? Because people will avoid you if they haven’t done their part,

• Did you properly prepare them for what people would say once they left your office? Because as soon as they tell the wrong person, all hell is going to break loose and it could destroy your deal. The infamous “I don’t see why you can’t just…statements start”

These questions are designed to help you not get ghosted, by gauging how committed, how open-minded, and how ready your customers really are, plus if there could be someone in the background who could mess up your sale.

Fast-forward…

We have 10 days left in the month and she needed to get some of these people back on the phone asap, so here’s what we did.

Because she wanted/needed to save her month…

We immediately pulled up and started looking at her customer notes (you should have notes on every customer), so we could find an immediate problem we could solve. 

If you’re getting ghosted and you need an immediate response from your customers, you must solve immediate problems.

Why? 

Because immediate problems are the ones your customers can’t ignore and if you’re trying to solve a problem “they think isn’t immediate” there’s no way they’ll pick up the phone, respond to your text or read your email. 

It’s like getting gas in a rainstorm: If you think you can make it home without stopping to get gas, you won’t stop. It doesn’t matter how cheap the gas is, you're not stopping! But if your car says 10 miles left and you live 20 miles further up the road? Hopefully, you brought your umbrella.

So, we dug into her customer notes and started texting customers…

Morning. Based on what you said, I did a little research, and I think I have a solution that you can use to solve your problem. And it’s cheaper than we discussed, are you interested?

Her phone started ringing almost immediately with people who were ready to move forward.

Why? 

Because they had no choice. She had what they needed and the only way they could get what they needed was to call her back.

What happened next?

The month ended with her being able to pay all her business and personal bills on time and have some money left over.

Then we got to work on transferring her marketing message to her new customers. 

Why?

So, if or when your customers run into someone (which we know they will) your customers have "the right words" to help people that trust them decide to trust you.

We worked on this, so that even if she did get ghosted again, it wouldn't be a problem because her current customers would be bringing her future customers. 

Businesses can be very hard to maintain and or grow, especially when you don't have the words you need to help you maintain your business without limiting your lifestyle.

If you're open-minded to the idea of sitting down with someone who can help you with the words, so you can use them to avoid getting ghosted while increasing your business at the same time…go to grownandrich.com