Let’s face it – prospects sometimes go quiet.

It may feel nerve wracking if you are new to sales, but if you’ve been around for some time, you understand it’s a part of the game.

The important thing to remember is to not take silence personally.

Potential customers get busy for a wide variety of reasons – they could have a big deadline coming up, there is some issue they are dealing with at home. Or even something as simple as they have higher priority initiatives at work.

Whatever the reason, prospect unresponsiveness should (usually) not be interpreted as an attack on you as a sales person.

However, if a prospect is being unresponsive, there are best practices that can be followed to ensure that they don’t ghost you forever. I will cover three different touch base methods, starting with the least recommended method to most, based on my years of experience at various companies in sales and business development roles.

We all know this one. It is usually a follow up to a previous email that went unanswered, but it could also be a standalone email. It goes something like:

“Hey Larry,

Just checking in to see if you saw my previous email and are available for a call over the next couple of weeks?

Best,

The Sales Wiz (insert your name here)”

This email is my least favorite, because it is so generic and provides little value to your prospect. In general, I would say avoid the “just checking in email”.

But, the place I think this email can provide value, is if the prospect is borderline interested, but they don’t have urgency, and you are trying to figure out if you should keep or move them out of your pipeline.

That’s when I like the checking in email, but I would shift it slightly and word it differently. I’ll go into greater detail on how to do this below.

I call this the “let me down easy” email, because it gives the prospect permission to break up with you, which can reveal if a customer views the problem you are helping them solve as critical or not.

As I mentioned earlier, this email may be good for prospects who are interested, but have no urgency. Sometimes, prospects may respond to it and say I’m interested, but busy with other initiatives, let’s talk later. They may have a need for your solution, but not now, rather in the future.

Either way, a prospect’s response to this email can help you assess need and urgency to solve a problem. The “let me down easy” email triggers the prospect to figure out if this is a priority for them, or not.

It is a variation of the “just checking in email”, but looks something like:

Subject Line: Is improving manufacturing efficiency still a priority?

“Hey Larry,

I wanted to check with you to see if improving your company’s manufacturing efficiency is still a priority for you and your team this quarter. Let me know if it no longer is.

Best,

The Sales Wiz”

I like this email because you are tying the email to a problem your solution would help solve. Likely this was a topic discussed in your first discovery call(s) with the prospect.

This email helps to jog the prospect’s memory, because don’t forget – they are probably thinking about your company and solution for a very brief part of their day.

Wording an email this way with a timeline in mind (this quarter), also helps the prospect decide if solving this problem is really a today or tomorrow initiative.

If a prospect does not respond to this email within a week or so you can assume your solution or the problem you solve is not that high of a priority for them or their immediate team. Either put the deal on the backburner, or move it out of your pipeline.

The compelling story or event email provides additional value in the form of an interesting event, case study, blog or other information relevant to your prospect.

This type of email is my favorite, because it shows a bit more thought beyond just re-stating the problem you are looking to solve with your prospect. It also adds context in the form of relevant, curated content.

Use these types of follow-ups for opportunities and prospects that you consider higher priority.

This method could fall flat if you provide irrelevant or poorly researched content. So make sure you get that part right, and spend time on curating the right content in your follow-up email.

An example email with a compelling event or story could look something like:

“Hey Larry,

Our company recently published a case study (linked here) with a customer who was working through a manufacturing efficiency challenge. They are early in implementation, but are already seeing positive results.

Are you still interested in a next conversation around improving your company’s manufacturing efficiency by adding smart cameras to production lines?

Best,

The Sales Wiz

You could just as easily substitute the case study for an industry event your company has passes to attend, or a webinar your team is putting on. The point of the compelling story is it is relevant and interesting to the customer, and gives them value while simultaneously following up.

If you focus on providing value in every interaction you have with a prospect, over the course of your time together, they will begin to associate you positively as someone that helps them and enhances their buying experience.

This is the opposite of the experience most prospects have with salespeople, and it is a good standard to strive for.

Even though we’ve covered three techniques, from worst to best, there are still other ways to check in and follow up with your prospects.

This could be through LinkedIn, by texting them, calling them or even working with others in your organization to reach out to your prospect or their peers / leaders.

As you’ll learn quickly in sales, deals are dynamic. They involve people, priorities, and politics in some cases. As a result, you have to see what works and doesn’t and then keep improving over time.

However, there are ways you can avoid certain mistakes even with less experience, such as not sending low value touchbase emails. Hopefully this blog is helpful in illustrating how to do so, and if you already knew all of this, then it has been a good review.

In this blog, I talk about how I have used ChatGPT to refine emails that I send to clients using AI, but in the meantime, feel free to try out the tool yourself if you haven’t already, linked below.