4 Ways to Stop Your Clients from Ghosting You

When you're working hard to build strong and rewarding relationships with clients, it can be extremely frustrating when they start to ignore or reject every effort you make to engage with them.

Left unaddressed, this can snowball into a serious problem for your business. Frequently losing contact with sales prospects will have a big impact on your conversion rates and revenue generation, while falling out of touch with existing customers increases your risk of cancellations and missed upsell opportunities.

It's important, therefore, to maintain good practices that will stop your clients from ghosting you.

1. Don't leave too much time between communications

If you've had a positive call or meeting with a client, don't wait too long to follow up on it and encourage them to take the next step in their decision-making process. Build on the rapport you've already established and remind them of the value you're able to offer them.

The same principle can apply to both sales prospects and existing customers. If you leave too much time between contacts with past buyers, there's a risk they’ll feel overlooked or simply forget about you, which increases the likelihood of them freezing you out.

Of course, there's a careful balance to be struck as far as customer messaging is concerned. You don't want to fall into the trap of badgering and ultimately annoying your clients, so look for a rhythm and frequency of communication that suits all parties.

2. Understand what your clients want and need

Clients are much more likely to start ignoring you if every call you make or email you send feels like an irritation or an interruption, as opposed to a relevant and genuinely useful interaction.

This largely comes down to understanding your customers and what they want, which requires careful research and planning.

Try to develop a strategy that will help you build nuanced, detailed pictures of your customers, encompassing key elements such as their most common challenges and how you can aid their efforts to overcome them.

Practical steps you can take to better understand particular segments of your audience, and consequently improve your communications with them, include:

• Creating specific personas that reflect their priorities and preferences, including their favored channels and methods of communication
• Collecting customer feedback to build a data-driven picture of what your buyers want and how you can provide genuine value for them
• Looking at what your competitors are doing, to get an idea of where they have seen good results and how your business can differentiate itself from its rivals

3. Tune into their patterns and rhythms

Another major benefit of knowing your customers on a deep level is that you can make accurate judgments about the best times to contact them to increase the likelihood of a response.

This is particularly significant for B2B companies. If you know your clients will be particularly busy at certain points in the month or the calendar year, you can time your communications to connect with them at the most convenient moments.

Businesses operating in sectors that are heavily influenced by seasonal trends - such as retail, tourism, and, construction - might want to focus on their core business at their busiest times, and not have to think about talking to vendors and suppliers.

By making contact at the right time, you can not only increase your chances of getting a response, but also demonstrate that you appreciate your clients' priorities and time pressures.

4. Work on building human relationships

Your relationships with clients need to be businesslike and professional, of course, but that doesn't mean you have to act like a robot when interacting with them.

It's perfectly acceptable to show your humanity by injecting a bit of humor or emotion into your messaging, as long as you feel confident this approach will go down well with particular clients.

Every call, email, or message should be tailored to suit the communication style and preferences of the customer in question. You also need to make sure you don't overstep the line between informal and inappropriate.

If you're able to achieve a human and relatable tone in your conversations, it's less likely that clients will end up ghosting you. After all, it's much easier for people to ignore an email that feels like it was sent by a machine than one that has a uniquely personal touch.