
Ask HN: How do you handle customer “ghosting”? - bobosha
To provide some context, I am the founder of an enterprise SaaS company. We have had quite a few customers - after expressing gushing delight over our offering - just go silent. No responses to emails or phone calls. How do you handle such situations?
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ddingus
Wait some time.

Make sure you are prospecting well. Do not let time sinks take away from
filling your pipe.

Then, send them a "let us not waste one another's time" email or two.

Basically ask whether they want, need contact. No pressure, just want to make
sure the activity makes sense for everyone.

This often works. When it does, you get clarity on what makes sense, and often
why.

When it doesn't, put those people on low rotation, a ping every few months.
Include some news, thing of value and well wishes.

They either unsub, or respond eventually.

By this stage, it should be background activity. Not a time sink.

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sophiamossman
I think the honesty of this approach could be refreshing

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ddingus
It works. We have had many sales come in up to a couple years after ghosting.

People get busy, initiatives change, management teams change, company gets
bought... newbie shows up, gets excited. Anything can happen.

You just never know.

But, what you can know is your pipe. Build it always, have a simple, honest
process for managing who goes through it.

What you can also know is people really do buy from who they like too. Those
long term, "thought they were gone" sales came in, and many of them cited the
news, well wishes and friendly engagement as factors.

They remember who took the time to both understand them and treat them like
humans.

Honest approaches can really help. The sales process is not a bad thing.
Letting people know it is OK to navigate it, communicate, etc... means more of
them will.

Where that happens, your time is spent more efficiently, and that leads to
more deals / person.

People are where they are. It is actually rare to "drive revenue" without ugly
tradeoffs like devaluing the product, or turning people off.

In almost every case where revenue is driven this way, one could qualify
people better, handle them in an honest way process wise, and a bigger pipe
outcome is the same or more revenue wise.

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muzani
Following up is vital in sales and should be built into every sales routine.

Sometimes it's just not top priority for the customer or they get distracted.
Sometimes, like taxes, it's on their to do list, but they procrastinate on it
until it's a bigger problem. Sometimes they've nearly maxed their budget and
chose to buy something else.

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techjuice
Best thing you can do is keep on moving on to gain new customers. If you have
something they want they will buy, move those that disappear into a contact
later group and reach out at a later time. Remember every pre-sales customer
has a cost/time value. If they are not bringing you in money move on to those
that do so you can further improve the SaaS company and maybe they will come
back when you have what they are looking for.

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JamesBarney
What I do is send them an email every couple of months. Some people get busy,
some people aren't interested anymore, some are embarrassed because they let
on they have more power to buy than they do.

Some will tell you to stop emailing, some will never respond and some will
eventually respond.

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detaro
Also check your contact is actually still working there/try to have multiple
people in the loop to avoid that.

