Why Friendliness Alone Won’t Close Stalled Prospects

You’ve just finished a great meeting with a key prospect. The conversation was enjoyable and natural, and you left on a high note with a list of action items to do before the next appointment. The prospect expressed excitement, too, saying they looked forward to receiving a proposal. After just one interaction, you almost feel like you’ve known this person for months, not weeks.

So, naturally, you assume that the next time you reach out to that prospect, they’ll quickly respond and open their schedule for you. Except, that’s not exactly what happens.

Instead, the prospect goes dark on you. They miss the meeting you’d scheduled after the last appointment. They don’t reply to your emails. Your calls go unreturned. You leave a polite, friendly voicemail – Hey Judy, Sorry I missed you! I’m really looking forward to continuing our conversation. Give me a call – but even that approach isn’t working.

What went wrong? Why aren’t they calling you back? How could they go from that jovial, valuable meeting to totally ignoring your outreach?

Let me ask you this question instead: If you were Judy, would you respond to that voicemail? Undoubtedly, your response—like most people—would be this: “it depends.”

If you just spoke to that salesperson two days ago, you’d probably return the call. The friendly conversation would still be fresh in your mind. The warmth of the discussion would still be new and exciting. And you’d still clearly remember the potential value this person’s solution could bring to your business.

If a week or more had passed, however, you might feel totally different about the relationship. In the time that’s passed since your first meeting with the salesperson, other priorities have cropped up and you’ve met with other salespeople who are selling similar solutions. Suddenly, all you remember about that first meeting was that the salesperson was nice and owed you something.

Does that scenario sound familiar?

What I just described is something that many salespeople fall victim to—what I like to call the “friend factor.” Simply put, it’s the mistaken assumption that a great first meeting with a prospect is a guarantor of a follow-up meeting—and, hopefully, a closed sale down the line. When salespeople are lulled into that false sense of friendship, they tend to think that leaving friendly voicemails—without actually saying anything of value—will generate a call back. Unfortunately, that’s generally not the case.

When a seemingly great prospect doesn’t respond to your calls or emails, you can’t count on a mistaken sense of friendship to break through the barrier. Instead, you have to switch up your message and use prospecting strategies that remind them why they wanted to talk to you in the first place. When you do that, you’ll generally find that prospects reconnect and act like old friends again.

Need some help perfecting those prospecting strategies, particularly when it comes to email?

Download a free copy of my Email PowerProspecting eBook here. You’ll discover a multitude of email prospecting strategies that you can use to immediately break through the delete barrier and reach top prospects—even if they’ve been ignoring your outreach for days or weeks.

Have some other questions about how to best engage prospects after a successful first meeting? Feel free to leave those questions in the comments section below or reach out to me directly.