Where Did Everybody Go?

You get that call.  The prospect on the other end brings forward a need.  After spending time in discovery to see if they are a good fit, you offer a scope of work, or your product solution. They seem interested and can't wait to start, and they promise to get back to you to move forward.  Days go by and no response. You contact via email and place a call to see if they are still interested. Still nothing.

More and more we are hearing from clients about the issue of ghosting.  We even experience it ourselves.

In this episode we talk about this issue and steps you can take to minimize ghosting in your business process.

[00:00:00.17] - Alice

Books in the Biz, a podcast that looks at both the financial and operational sides of success. Please welcome our hosts, Dan Paulson and Richard Veltre. Dan is the CEO of Envision Development International, and he works with leaders to increase sales and profits through great cultures with solid operations. Rich is CEO of the Veltre Group and a financial strategist working with companies to manage their money more effectively. Now on to the podcast.

[00:00:32.22] - Dan Paulson

Thank you, Alice. You will never ghost us, will you? Anyway, here we are. We're books in the biz. We're back at it again. Hi, Rich. How are you doing?

[00:00:41.14] - Rich Veltre

I am good, Dan. How are you?

[00:00:43.15] - Dan Paulson

I am doing wonderfully. I am happy to see you on this podcast. I am happy to be here with you on this podcast because our subject is about people who just don't show up. So we thought we'd have a little fun with this and maybe talk about some solutions, because this seems to be coming more prevalent. I know when we were discussing topics earlier, you had mentioned that it seems like clients, well, not so much clients, but prospects, In some cases, contractors. So people you're trying to sub with, they just don't follow up anymore. And you ran away. Tell me what you're seeing, what you're seeing.

[00:01:26.26] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, it's been brutal. I There's no other way to really put it. I mean, it's just been to the point of you email, you don't get a response. Tell me to jump in a lake. I don't care. Tell me something, because I'm left to my own vice to try to figure out what was it that went wrong, because you immediately assume something went wrong, that these people who you're talking to make it sound like, hey, I'm ready to go. Let's sign here. Let's go. And then when you do a follow up, there's nothing. So I don't know that I have a solution. I just think it's been relatively ridiculous, the amount of time, because you don't have an endpoint. You decide, well, do I keep going after this client or not, or this prospective client? And it gets annoying because you just don't know. Should I keep going? And then if you do stop, should I have kept going. So your mind just runs amok.

[00:02:36.12] - Dan Paulson

I wondered, is this just something unique to us? Are we really that people don't want to talk to us. And what I found is with different clients and other colleagues I have, this is not an uncommon issue. This has been pretty much across the board. People have been seeing it increase more and more recently. And like you, I'm not sure what or why. I can only speculate. Some of my guesses are, is inflation and everything going on gives people a little jittery. And for example, we were talking before we started recording here. You get contacted by somebody, they're ready to go. They're like, we are going to start next week. I just need to know the scope of what we're going to be doing and what the investment is. And you say, well, what's your budget? And the moment you ask, what's your budget? They go, well, we don't have a budget right now. That's what you're here for. You tell us what we need to do and tell us how much it costs, and then we'll figure it out from there. And what I find is the moment you don't get any, at least preliminary idea of what they're thinking in their head, there's no return call.

[00:03:56.24] - Dan Paulson

They have pretty much whatever number that they're thinking is definitely much lower than the number that you're thinking for the amount of work that they want you to do. So I think some of it is in the sales process. And maybe some of the solutions that we talk about are what are different things we can do in the process, or what are different things that companies can do in the process? Because it has gotten more prevalent across the board. I'm hearing about in construction. I'm hearing about in other service related businesses. I know both you and I have dealt with this, occasionally with certain prospects or certain clients. But it's just really weird how it seemed like it was common knowledge or etiquette that you would at least follow up. No is fine. Yes is fine. Nothing is not good, because then you wonder what happened. You can't change what you're doing. You can't go back to them and say, well, if this is out of what you think your investment is or your budget is, can we do something different? Can we restructure the scope of work? Maybe there's a preliminary where we can get started, show some results and move forward.

[00:05:09.12] - Dan Paulson

There just seems to be a number of opportunities in If that etiquette is followed, but for whatever reason, it's not.

[00:05:18.11] - Rich Veltre

Right. Yeah. And I guess to add to what you said, yes, I definitely see an uptick in if I'm trying to get a contract signed or get a project moving. But that, like you said, is a sales process. It seems like it's also not just sales. It seems like just getting people to communicate has become more difficult. Even in a project, I'm trying to come up with a really good example, but even when you're trying to get the answers that you need to do a project, I'll call it a tax return. I've had a tax return that we've been working on since April 15th. We put it on extension because we said, oh, we're just going to wait because we need this other piece of information. Well, we got that information. Then we said, okay, here's the open items list. It's been two months. And trying to get someone to answer the questions that go along with just getting that project completed is, why isn't somebody just responding, saying, well, here's when we'll get it to you, or we're really busy, and we'll get back to you? There's nothing. So I think that has to lead to something other than a fear of the budget, or a fear of there's going to be an invoice for that.

[00:06:42.27] - Rich Veltre

And I've come to the conclusion a long time ago, I don't generally bill by the hour because I'm afraid people aren't going to call me because they're going to think that's a triggering effect.

[00:06:53.00] - Dan Paulson

Yeah, exactly.

[00:06:53.23] - Rich Veltre

If they call, I'm going to send a bill. So I've gone to... It's a flat fee. So Don't worry about it. We don't get anything done if we don't talk. So I think there's a little bit more we got to add on top of that and say, what else could be the reason for this? Because it's not just sales.

[00:07:15.14] - Dan Paulson

So do you see it as either generational or is it sensory overload? And what I mean by sensory overload is even 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more than that, you really didn't have... We have Blackberries, so you might get your email on your phone, but you really didn't have that much outside of that. Now you have smartphones with apps and it's text, and chats, and social media, and emails, and phone calls, and everything else. What I noticed, and even sometimes what I'm guilty of, is you'll get so much throughout the course of the day that you just miss it. You either don't see the email come in or the text message come in, and you're busy doing other stuff, and all of a sudden, two days goes by, it's like, well, I should have heard something on that. And then I dig up and find information. So to me, I'm assuming there's some of that. But I'm also curious, is this something that's more millennial or Gen Z based in the way they communicate that's different than the way we communicate? I don't know. Are you seeing anything with the type of clientele that don't respond as quickly?

[00:08:26.05] - Rich Veltre

Yeah. The only thing I think I can see is that There is clearly a gap. Usually, the gap is people younger than me and people older than me. It's not usually with me, right? Because people older than me insist on writing a physical check, putting it in the physical mail, putting a physical postage stamp on it, and then taking it to the post office. And then if you're lucky, it makes And if you're unlucky, they stop off and they say, you know, maybe it'd be better if I send it by UPS. And then nobody knows where it is. So that's one generation. And then the younger generation can't put up with that. They just don't understand why people are like that, so they just shut down. And so people like me who get caught in the middle of that, you're stuck. I don't have a solution for you. I hate to tell you, I'm sorry. I just don't have one. But I think there's a little bit of both of what you said. I think there's a little bit of sensory overload, because I think there's an awful lot of ways for people to communicate now, like you said.

[00:09:45.15] - Rich Veltre

I think the cure, and as I say this, I'm like, I have to put this down in my notes that I need to make sure that I do this on every single client. What's your preferred method of communication? I have to ask. Okay. Because if I send an email, and that guy is constantly on his text on his phone, you missed him. So that part of it definitely there. Other than that, I think there's a bit of a generational gap. I'm starting to feel old because of not being able to communicate. So that's telling me, yes, there's a piece of it that's still generational. But I think sensory overload is a big piece of it.

[00:10:31.25] - Dan Paulson

Yeah, I tend to agree with you there. I do believe that you're right. The older generation is much more used to physical and paper and seeing, feeling, touching. And the younger generation doesn't even want to waste their time with that. And they're more in a messaging apps and texts and whatnot. I mean, even my daughter, heaven forbid, I actually call her. She 50 % of the time may answer the phone. But if I text her, I get almost immediate response. So So, yes, I think that's a good example of knowing how your clients want to communicate and matching that by saying, what's the best method to reach you? Another thing, whether you're dealing with a prospect or even dealing with a client, Before you end the one meeting, if there is a follow up meeting that's needed, you schedule that meeting before you hang up, or before you get off Zoom, or whatever tool you're using to communicate. That prevents a lot of just things disappearing off in the thin air, because I know you and I, when we're busy with clients, when we're doing one thing and we jump off, we're usually immediately jumping into something else.

[00:11:40.01] - Dan Paulson

So if you haven't taken the time to schedule that meeting, two or three days might go by, for example, and you got, oh, crap, I've got to schedule my meeting with John Smith because we need to follow up on that conversation we had. And especially true in the prospecting phase of sales, having that next meeting set, if there hasn't been a decision made is critically important. Now, is that 100 % guaranteed that they're actually going to show up for the phone call or the meeting? No, I have shown up at people's offices, had a meeting schedule. They're nowhere to be found. Wasted my time I've had phone calls scheduled. Go up for the phone call, make the phone call, get their voicemail. So it's not 100 % perfect, but I do believe that there are things that we have to do to minimize the amount of ghosting that's going on, because some of it's intentional, some of it's not. I don't know about you, but I get hit by probably 400 emails a day. Of those, 350 are probably complete junk. Because You were saying something about you get that email offering services, and it even starts out with your fill in the blank first name.

[00:12:54.21] - Dan Paulson

Okay, what good is this? Who is this? Is this real or is this a bot What's going on here?

[00:13:01.20] - Rich Veltre

Yeah. Those are incredibly fun when you realize that not only are you overwhelmed by the number of emails that you're getting, that a lot of them are someone else is looking for you to respond in a way that empowers them. It helps them. It makes them money. When they don't take the time to actually review what they're sending me, it's like an automatic number one delete. And if there's a way to unsubscribe, then I would unsubscribe. I would try to make sure I do everything possible to take myself off that person's list.

[00:13:43.12] - Dan Paulson

Because- Actually, a lot of those you don't want to unsubscribe from because the moment you unsubscribe, they know there's a physical body at the other end of that email. And now they send you on even more lists and you get even more crap. So I actually learned that from, I can't remember if it was Better Business Bureau or what. But yeah, the unsubscribed does you no favors. It just validates that you're a human being so that they keep sending you more crap. But yeah, if there's any way you've got junk mail or spam filters, trying to get rid of most of that stuff for whatever reason, no matter how tight I get that spam filter, it seems like a lot of those emails still sneak their way through. And of course, you can do a block after the fact, but the emails always change. So it seems frustrating to sometimes deal with that. Yeah.

[00:14:30.19] - Rich Veltre

And then you got to deal with the emails on LinkedIn, and people see your profile. So you want to be public, but you don't want to be public. You want to find a way to be private, but you still want everybody who you want to find you to find you. So it's so difficult to decide what to do. I think half of them just get deleted. Sometimes I just want to show somebody that I'm unsubscribing. It's more for me than it for anybody else to hit the unsubscribe button, just to feel that little bit better about the fact that this person didn't even care enough to send me an email that had my name in it, had my first name in it. They programmed something that was faulty, and they still decided to send it out. I don't know.

[00:15:21.19] - Dan Paulson

Well, you brought up the LinkedIn in-mail stuff. And you want to get ghosted by me? Pitch me Right out of the gate. Pitch me something in in-mail without even talking to me or without even knowing anything about me. It seems like I get a franchise in-mail at least once a week from somebody who wants to know if I want to start a franchise based on the experience in my LinkedIn profile. If they had read my LinkedIn profile, they would know I wouldn't want to be in a franchise. It wouldn't be first thing on my list. But again, it's just another way of spamming people. And I'm sure that's also part of what causes ghosting, is because we get hit with so much information, so much of it is just blatant solicitation of business, that you never really get anywhere with it. So we're all facing this challenge of dealing with the ghosting issue because everyone's trying to sell something somewhere.

[00:16:23.26] - Rich Veltre

It's unfortunate because every once in a while, when I'm in a good mood, not a bad mood, when I'm in a good You're in a good mood every once in a while?

[00:16:32.09] - Dan Paulson

What's up with that?

[00:16:32.10] - Rich Veltre

Every once in a while, yeah. I can only be grumpy so often. Every once in a while, you got to reset a little bit. So every once in a while, you look at the other side of the coin, and you say, if I was in their shoes, how would I feel sending out all kinds of emails and not getting a response or getting that 2 % response? If you're getting 2 %, you're doing well. Oh, 98 % of the I'm like, I'm the evil guy. So no, that's not a fun job. It's no different than years and years and years ago when somebody said, here, you're going to call everybody on this list and do telemarketing. I mean, that was a horrible job. This is just digitally horrible. It's just the next level of horrible. So I try to play the other side a little bit. And occasionally, I'll get an email that you know somebody took some time to write. You know somebody actually looked at your profile, got to you and said, here's what we noticed, and here's why we're contacting you. Hope I didn't bother you, but I think this would be a great conversation to have.

[00:17:45.18] - Rich Veltre

A lot of times I might actually respond to that person and say, I'm not in the market for this right now. But maybe in the future, but right now, I'm not in the market for this. And Because of two things. Number one, they paid for that email. They paid for that in-mail. You only get a certain number. And if you send out a lot of these, then you paid for it. So I will respond and say, you know what? Because I respond that I know you got your credit back. So at least at that point, you did good. But I mean, other than that, for the people who don't spend the time, who are clearly off base, who are asking me as an accountant Don't you need somebody to do your accounting? Why would I need somebody to do my accounting? It doesn't fit. You didn't take the time to see the profile. Somebody handed you a profile, you sent it an email, and you have all three I'm only worth three seconds to do it. I'm only worth three seconds to you. So you don't get a response. You get a delete. But, yeah, that's- Well, I think you've highlighted a key component of all this is if you want to avoid getting ghosted, build the relationship first.

[00:19:06.18] - Dan Paulson

Don't build the transaction, because if everything's transactional, it's easy for that other person to cut you off, not respond, even if they reached out to you in the first place and said, this is something we really want to do, and we want to do it right now. Okay, well, if something changed, I would at least want to know what changed and why. And is it a result of something I did, or is it a result result of something that changed on your end? And I think if you have that relationship, you're going to at least get some feedback or some follow up. Maybe something got delayed, maybe it got pushed off, maybe no longer valid. Any of those things are fine. Again, yes, it's fine, no, it's fine. The maybe is the part that sucks for most of us, because any business owner, if they hear that maybe, they're like, okay, what's my next step? Do I continue to follow up? Do I just cut bait and go somewhere else? I think most people try to follow up to at least to either a yes or no answer. So we're talking a lot about sales here, but these are some of the basics that I think many companies deal with.

[00:20:08.27] - Dan Paulson

Ghosting has gone way up, and I think has gone way up because of the transaction overload when it comes to things like social media, emails, networking, the whole bit. And we need to get back to some of the basics of just building those connections with people to help make that, get a response. Because if I feel like I'm I owe somebody at least a response, more than likely I'm going to give it to them. If they bug the heck out of me, I'm not going to return their calls.

[00:20:42.02] - Rich Veltre

Well, I had someone else who was I think they were a sales trainer who we were talking about this. And I said, you get these emails all the time. This is somebody who... Here's another scenario, right? You'll get the one email from someone saying, this is going to be great for you. And literally And then finally, two seconds later, you get another one. Oh, I know you got contacted by this other person in our company. So I'm like, so now it's a tag team effort.

[00:21:11.11] - Dan Paulson

Yeah, I get those, too.

[00:21:13.02] - Rich Veltre

Yeah. But I think the big question here is, if you're a sales trainer, I don't know, this is probably helpful to one of the people listening to us who is a sales trainer, right? But there's a difference between short term and long term, okay? Yeah. What you were discussing a second ago was the long term side of it, right? Build a relationship. People buy things from people they trust, right? So building that long term. And sometimes the sales relationship is short term, where they need to hit their quota. They need the transaction. They need that to be done. It doesn't necessarily work to build the long term relationship. So they're trying so hard to get the Short term. Maybe this is a culture shift. Maybe we have to tell people this isn't really happening on the short term, or maybe I'm on the wrong page.

[00:22:11.27] - Dan Paulson

Well, I think it is still happening on the short term because Playing the numbers game has been around for eons, and it does work. It's just there's a whole lot of no to get to a yes. So out of every hundred calls that you make, you might get one yes. Okay, well, if that one yes turns into a sale, it worked, right? But it's a very painful process, and it's very time consuming, and it requires a lot of work.

[00:22:39.26] - Rich Veltre

So for me, a short term has never worked. And I think it's because of the... Maybe it's the nature of the industry, right? If I'm going to do accounting work for somebody, there's not a chance that I'm just going to show up on a Tuesday and say, hey, you need a bookkeeping, you need a tax return, you need You need your audit done. I would never find out that I showed up on Tuesday, and by Tuesday night, I got a contract. But when I go to a sales seminar and it talks about how you bring in a client, boy, they want you to come out. You go into the meeting on Monday morning, you come out with a deal or some lead to a deal. And that, I don't know, it just doesn't resonate with me because I've been working this now for 32 years. And in In two years, I've never seen it actually happen. So if that's the sales training that you have for me, that's not going to work.

[00:23:38.06] - Dan Paulson

Well, I think depending upon the product or service, it can happen. I actually have had one or two deals that have closed the same day. They are few and far between. And basically what it leads to is I had a referral that brought me in that knew the problem and knew I had the solution to it. So when I got in there, I already had the heads up of what was going on. There There was the discovery meeting, and there was a very quick explanation. Well, here's my process. Here's how I do it. They were excited about that process. There was trust built because there was a referral brought in, so it was a warm lead. That led to close the business. If it's me just calling out of the blue, typically that's not the world that happens. It's weeks or months, sometimes years. I've had clients pop up 14, 15 years after I first talked to them because now they had a Back then they did not. So you never know what's going to happen, which also should say, best thing to do is not burn any bridges. So as we're talking about ghosting here, if somebody said no now, it doesn't mean that you should just necessarily blow them off and not ever deal with them again, because you don't know if down the road, situations might change.

[00:24:49.13] - Dan Paulson

And because you built that bond, you built that connection, you now have an opportunity. So, yeah, I think that's, we're talking about sales. Neither one of us deal with sales. I'm your numbers. So maybe we have to eventually get somebody out here to do a sales interview and talk about this further, because I'm sure they deal with ghosting a lot, and they might have some solutions for it. But I guess that ends our rant for this podcast, and hopefully we've provided some solutions. Follow up and do your due diligence and build those relationships. I guess that's our recommendations. But if somebody does need taxi accounting and they want to go to you, how would they do that?

[00:25:36.05] - Rich Veltre

Send me an email at rveltre@veltregroup.com.

[00:25:40.07] - Dan Paulson

And if there's other functions going on in your business that are totally not related to sales, because I really don't do much of that. But if you got some operational issues or you got some successions, some changes going on there, definitely give me a shout at danpaulsonletsgo.com, and either one of us would be happy to help you out. So that's our episode of Books in the Biz, or our rant for Books in the Biz this time. You can definitely find other episodes at booksnbiz.com. That is B-O-O-K-S, the letter N, B-I-I-Z. Com. And Rich, we'll see you on the next episode, where hopefully we'll be ranting about something different.

[00:26:20.07] - Rich Veltre

Sounds good.

[00:26:21.18] - Dan Paulson

All right. Take care.

[00:26:24.20] - Rich Veltre

All right. I'll see you.