September 7, 2024 | Read online
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My daughter’s first week of High School is in the books, and by most accounts, it seems like it was a success.
Going from her old school, which had a class size of 12 kids for the past 5 years, to over 150 is a welcome change but a big adjustment.
There are a lot more options for friends, sports, music, art, classes and my nightmare…boys.
Have you ever seen Bad Boys 2 when the boyfriend shows up to pick up Martin Lawrence’s Daughter? Yup, that’s going to be me.
I decided this week to share some tips that are relevant to sales and dating, along with some support for Women in Sales since we need a lot more of them.
TACTICAL TIPS: How to Avoid Getting Ghosted
SALES RESOURCES: Subject Line Grader
SALES FROM THE STREETS: Dealing with the Male Ego
TACTICAL TIPS:
How to Avoid Getting Ghosted
Getting ghosted sucks. It brings back bad memories of the dating scene and makes you say and do desperate things.
There are plenty of reasons why clients ghost us related to how we run the sales process and the value we add to the client but that’s a much larger issue.
For this tactical tip, I'm going to share with you an approach I use that has significantly reduced the amount of times I’ve been ghosted.
It starts with my Summary Email that I’ve written about in a previous newsletter.
If the client has confirmed the summary email and you’ve discussed a next step (ex. Follow up meeting on Friday) and they don’t show or they ghost you, then follow this approach:
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“Reply All” to the summary email with something like this:
- Hi Sara, I’m not sure what happened on Friday. I hope everything is ok. Let me know when you want to reschedule our call.
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1-2 days later make a call and leave a voicemail with a similar message
- Stay “assumptive” on the reschedule
- 1-2 days later, “reply-all” to the email again and give specific dates/times or include your calendar link
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2-3 days later “reply-all” to the email again, change the subject line to read “Still Interested?” and then write in the body of the email:
- Hi (name), Could you let me know if you’re still interested either way so I don’t continue with any unnecessary follow-up?
- 1-2 days later, “reply-all” one more time and change the subject line to “Did I lose you?” and that’s it. Don’t write anything in the body of the email.
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If they still don't respond after that, then either go after someone else at the company or send them an email saying something to the effect of:
- Hi (name), It looks like (problem) isn’t a priority for you anymore. Please feel free to reach back out to me directly if it ever comes back to the top of the priority list.
I get about a 90% response rate with this approach. They aren’t all positive responses, though. At least half of them tell me they have gone in a different direction but at least I know.
Like I said above, there are a lot of other factors involved in getting ghosted and a bunch of different approaches to engage with other people throughout the sales process to make sure you’re not single-threaded but this approach works well when you’ve run out of options.
SALES RESOURCES:
SubjectLineGrader.com
I’m not sure if you’re like me, but I can usually bang out a high-quality, personalized email in less than 5 minutes, but I tend to spend the next 10-15 minutes trying to figure out what to put in the stupid subject line.
I found a free tool a while ago that helps me get that time back.
It’s a free resource provided by Salesloft called www.subjectlinegrader.com (not sponsored just think its a great tool).
The url is exactly what it is. It grades your subject line.
All you have to do is add your subject line and it will grade it for you based on the most up to date open rates calculated by Salesloft and the thousands/millions of emails that go through their platform.
It even breaks down the positive or negative impact of each word.
It’s not a game changer or anything but it has saved me time based on my analysis paralysis.
SALES FROM THE STREETS:
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I try to be an advocate and champion for Women in Sales.
Some of the best sales professionals I’ve ever met are women, and we need far more of them in this profession.
Unfortunately, this is a very male-dominated profession, and the bro culture isn’t exactly inviting more in.
I’ve spoken out about this more than a few times, but not nearly enough.
I always tell any male who thinks it’s not really that big of an issue or doesn’t see it impacting their team to go watch the “We Need To Talk” webinar I did with Trish Bertuzzi, Lori Richardson and Kasey Jones.
It was eye opening on many levels, especially when you read some of the survey responses.
Recently I had Elyse Archer, the CEO of She Sells on the Make it Happen Monday podcast to talk about breaking through barriers on many different levels.
I found her story and perspective to be incredibly powerful.
She has her “Quantum Leap Factor” conference coming up on September 25th and 26th in Portland Maine.
The focus of the two day conference is going to be on “how to integrate masculine & feminine energy to skyrocket your results this year AND beyond.”
I’m going to be stopping by and donating some of the books I wrote with my daughter (I Want to Be In Sales When I Grow Up) to help introduce sales to kids and get more women into sales as well.
Elyse has also been kind enough to offer someone in my audience a free ticket to the event. This is a $3000 ticket that she’s giving away for free.
So, if you’re interested in attending or know someone who would be and can make it to Maine on September 25th and 26th (you have to pay your own expense) then send me a direct email (john@jbarrows.com) with a brief story of why you want to go and what you hope to get out of the event.
I’ll choose the best story/reason and see you there.
Also, if you know anyone who would want to sponsor an event like this, let me know and I can put you in direct contact with Elyse.
Let’s all do what we can to level up this entire profession together.
#MakeitHappen
ADDITIONAL WAYS YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR SALES GAME
- The JB Sales Membership is where you’ll get access to my live training, workshops, AMAs and OnDemand catalog so you can level up your sales skills every day! 3000+ Sales pros have already joined. Are you next?
- The industry-leading Make it Happen Monday Podcast where you’ll get insights and inspiration from some of the most interesting and influential people in the world of Sales and business. (this is where you’ll hear the Guy Kawasaki episode on May XYZ)
- The JB Sales YouTube channel with practical tips that you can apply immediately to drive results along with interviews and content that is guaranteed to get you to think differently.
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