It’s Not Your Prospect’s Job to Call You Back

Here are the questions you may be asking yourself:

Why doesn’t my prospective client return my calls?

Why doesn’t anyone reply to my emails?

How do you compel a prospect to call you back or reply to your email?

First, let’s make sure we understand the nature of the relationship between you, the salesperson, and your prospect, the person who you are asking for their single, finite, non-renewable resource, their time. You are pursuing your prospect in hopes of obtaining their business. They are not pursuing you in hope that you will kindly bestow upon them the generous opportunity to do business with you. These things being true, your prospective clients have no obligation to reply to you at all.

Next, it is important to understand why your prospective client doesn’t respond. They are busy running their business. They have said yes to meetings with salespeople who created so little value as to be no better than a commercial for their company and product. They are overwhelmed with requests from people on their team and from their own clients. Your request for time isn’t likely enough to crowd out the more important priorities for which they already have too little time available. Unless, of course, it does rise to that level . . .

To be someone worth meeting with, you must have something worth gaining from that meeting. You must trade enough value that your pitch for time promises more value than the value of the time your prospective client is gifting to you (and it is a gift). Unless and until you get this right, not only will you not get a return call or email, you also will be deprived of the meeting you so badly desire.

If you are professionally and persistently pursuing your dream client, know that this means it is your responsibility to call them again, and it is not their responsibility to return your call or email. It’s also your responsibility to frame your request as a trade for value in which they are on the receiving end, whether they do business with you or not.

Stop staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring. Pick up the phone and try again with a more effective approach.