What to Do When a Prospect Goes Dark

Even if you've done everything right, prospects can go dark. But this doesn't necessarily mean they're lost forever. The difference between good and outstanding salespeople is that the latter can take these no-hope cold prospects and bring them back to life.

Having a strategic approach to get these prospects back into your sales pipeline can make all the difference to your success.

But do you have this ability in your sales toolkit? Or do you find that too many of your cold leads are actually lost causes? Take a look at these steps towards warming your prospects back up and getting them re-engaged in what you have to offer.

Reach out

It may seem obvious, but the first step you need to take is to reach out to any prospects that have gone cold. The trick here is to make sure you are adding something of genuine value in your correspondence. This can be a new service that they get premier access to, discounts off your normal prices or even something as simple as some form of original content.

Sending out an email with a whitepaper that your prospect will find engaging may be enough to remind them of the value you can bring to their business, but there are other ways you can sweeten the deal.

Personalizing these points of contact can have a massive impact on your chance of success. Good salespeople make notes after every conversation with a lead, allowing them to pull out key details that may be valuable. This is never more important than when trying to re-engage a cold lead.

Take to social media

If your normal sales channels aren't hitting the spot, try social media. For many people, this is where they want to make genuine professional connections and so it can be an effective in for salespeople. However, use caution. You need to make sure you are offering something of value before you approach them and don't just plan to nag them until they block you.

It may be that there's an event coming up that you're attending that you think they would be interested in, or a link they've shared that has engaged you. These can give you a genuine talking point to start getting your prospect back into the pipeline.

Think outside the box

Whether it's trying to contact them at a different time of day or including personalized gifs in your email, trying out new ideas on cold prospects can be a fantastic opportunity to let your creativity flow. Maybe you want to tell them about a new internal change at your company, an industry development that is really affecting you or ask your prospect for a local recommendation; these off-beat conversations can lead to valuable connections.

Of course, you want to use a good amount of caution to avoid marketing faux pas, but it can help you stand out from the crowd.

Understand their reasoning

Did you know why they were unwilling to buy the first time round? If not, you need to spend time finding out their reason as it's the best chance you have of changing their minds. Find this out and then tempt them in with a new service or offering to re-engage them.

A key part of this is also recognizing when a lead is dead. You need to be able to know when there's no potential value left in a prospect. This allows you to scratch that one off and concentrate on new leads or other cold prospects that stand a much better chance of getting back in the pipeline.