I’m writing this as a good reminder for myself when getting discouraged at leads dropping off, but was originally spurred to write on this topic after coaching a second round of interns this summer at the VC Studio, where they helped source, call, and set demos for my sales pipeline.
It’s always a terrible feeling when I’m working a promising sales lead, I’ve done the work to warm it up from the freezing cold state it starts from before they hear about the awesome thing I have to sell, everything’s going great, and suddenly, the lead drops off at one point or another. Something’s gone wrong, and instead of using my time to find new, amazing leads to add more dollars to my next month’s commission check, I have to go back and try to get the prospect reengaged and re-excited to buy the product that will make their lives better. Unfortunately, this happens to a LOT of leads, which can be frustrating for me and any salesperson who wants their leads to just close!
What I’ve learned from this is that lead drop-off stems from different reasons depending on where I am in the closing process. I keep my pipeline stages as simple as I can, and although these only all really apply to a full-cycle, outbound account executive closing deals with quick turnaround, I think some-to-most of them work pretty well for SDR/BDR/inbound pipelines too.
- Attempted – No contact with a person.
- Gatekeeper (GK) Connect – Speaking with anyone who isn’t the owner.
- Decision Maker (DM) Connect – Speaking with anyone with buying power, without getting a date on the calendar yet.
- Demo Set – Successfully setting a demo with the decision maker.
- Demo Held – Successfully holding a demo with the decision maker.
From here it definitely depends on whether I’m passing a deal to someone, closing during the demo, or sending an invoice, but that’s just a quick overview of how my personal pipeline has looked at my last several sales roles. The following sections are a summary of a lot of notes I’ve taken on leads going cold at different stages in my pipeline.
Gatekeeper Navigation
Calling the same person who promises to have the owner of a business call you back gets annoying pretty quickly. If my lead is stagnating here, I know I either need to find the owner’s direct contact info myself, or get the gatekeeper to give it to me with a more creative approach. It’s very rare that a gatekeeper will give me a personal cell number, so I rely on getting as much info from the gatekeeper as possible while giving the least amount of info they need to consider me important enough to get the decision maker.
I usually try to probe for the following info in order of importance – Direct cell, personal email, and best time/place to call. Occasionally I’ll get to them in some other way (One time the gatekeeper insisted that sending a Facebook message inquiry to the business page was the only way to get in touch with the owner, which, to my surprise, ended up being the first demo I booked using Facebook), but 90% of the time, I’ll need one of those three things if I ever want to talk to someone with some buying power.
Decision Maker (DM) Connect
If I’m on the phone with an owner and not scheduling a demo or progressing the lead to that point, I’m doing something wrong. Most of the time, I didn’t convince them of the value enough, and I need to practice my pitch or find new angles to show whatever amazing product I’m selling is worth their engagement. Reviewing calls that drop off here is super important and usually leads me to start writing, improving my pitch and selling points. This is really the most important part to me, because it’s where the bulk of the actual sale happens.
Demo Setting (No shows)
I don’t take it personally when I do get a meeting booked and the decision maker doesn’t show – They’re busy, life is unpredictable, I get it. I try to eliminate most of the reasons why they wouldn’t show ahead of time – Things like repeating the date and time of the scheduled demo verbally to them on phone call or a personalized email reminder the day of the meeting combined with the automated reminders Google sends out.
I used to be pretty bad at the immediate follow-up after a no-show, because I assumed that if people scheduled a call with me, they’d be motivated to actually show up. Now, I try to be on top of it every time. Assuming I have their phone number at this point, I’ll usually give them a call if they’re not in the meeting after five minutes, send a “Does this time still work for you?” message, then a “Missed you on the call today. When can we reschedule?” after 10 or 15 minutes.
Demo Hold to Post-Demo/Close
The most disappointing drop-off occurs when I’ve done my job the whole way through, got to the owner, pitched them, set a demo, and held it with them. They have everything they need to make a decision, and… no payment. My current sales role has a bit of a frustrating closing process, since I’m selling a technical product that requires systems integration with a third-party integrator, the “close” can take days following the demo depending on if they need additional hardware, another conversation with the integrator, or some other random thing. Not ideal, but it’s made me engage a LOT more in the post-demo stage. Definitely different than my first sales job, where it was entirely on me to close them by getting their card info at the end of the call.
Assuming the reason they drop off here is something under my control, I cover all my bases as best as possible. Did I cover all their objections or was there a hidden hesitation that they didn’t express? Were they truly motivated to get the ball rolling at the end of the call? Did I clearly outline the next actions to get them set up with the product?
Sometimes all it takes is a quick follow-up phone call to find out that I missed some small detail, cover their objection, and they sign the contract right after.
In Conclusion
My sales process is constantly being iterated upon. I had to write my own script for my current sales role, and the Google Doc I store it in is called something crazy like “Sales Script 6.0 v2 final”. Leading this summer’s intern group gave me some good insight into more reasons why leads go cold again, and led to some good tweaks in my pitch and follow-up that I implemented in my own process. I hope this summary can be a good place to reflect on when my leads go cold and I can keep improving my outreach with new tweaks every week.