Are you wondering what to do if a client ghosts you? You’re in the right place.
It’s the modern-day nightmare: you’ve had a great potential client inquire, sent them a link to sign up for a discovery call… and then they vanish like a ghost. You feel frustrated, confused, and possibly even panicked – what are you going to do now?
As an entrepreneur, getting ghosted by clients can be especially daunting. You’ve risked it all to pursue your dream of making money on your own terms – so when someone bails without notice, it’s hard to not take it personally!
The good news is that there are steps you can take when this happens; let’s look at the best approach for dealing with situations where leads suddenly go MIA. Here’s what to do if a client ghosts you.
Know that it happens to most service providers
The first thing to know is that sometimes this does happen, and obviously, it doesn’t happen all the time, and it shouldn’t happen all the time, but it does happen, and when it does happen, you really can’t feel that terrible about it!
Follow up on another social platform
What I do to kind of minimize this from happening is I will immediately hop over to Instagram when I send a proposal after a discovery call with a client, and I’ll send them a quick DM on there and just be like, “Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I just sent over the proposal. If you have any questions at all, let me know. It was so much fun chatting with you today.”
I found that what this does is it at least lets me know that they did receive the proposal because normally they’ll like my message, they’ll respond and say “thank you.”
It also keeps a little bit more of that human touch versus just sending emails back and forth like in HoneyBook or Dubsado. Sometimes too, our CRM would send the proposal to spam and by us sending the message directly on Instagram, the person could respond and let us know if they even received it.
Make sure to follow up via email, too
One thing to note too, is that after we have a discovery call with somebody, we usually let them look over the proposal for about three days before we go ahead and follow up.
Anytime we send a proposal, it includes all of our next available dates. If we meet with three people on the same day in a discovery call, we give each of them the same set of upcoming dates that we have available and we do first come, first serve.
Only follow up once, though
We only follow up once at Inkpot Creative. The reason we do this is because if roles were reversed and we consistently got follow-ups from people, we’d probably be a little bit annoyed.
When I first started my business, I did follow up with people a lot more just because I did need new clients more. But as the business has grown, I found just one follow-up is all you need. We’re all adults. If someone does want to work with me, they’re going to reach out regardless, and there’s really no need to send more than one follow-up email.
I would say you can do max two follow ups, but normally one is what I found works best.
Still no answer? Remind yourself these lessons
Now, what to do if a client ghosts you? So after I follow up with someone and I find out that I have been ghosted, this is what I do next. There’s this set of things that I like to remind myself and I think it’s definitely worth reminding yourself as well if you do find yourself in a position of being ghosted.
The first thing I remind myself of is that it probably has nothing to do with me, so it probably also has nothing to do with you.
That’s just because often, as business owners, we have a million things going on, let’s be honest. So maybe someone met with you and just completely forgot. Maybe they have it written on their to-do list to follow up with you on a certain date and they just haven’t gotten back to you yet. We are all very busy people.
Also, think about how it would feel if you were in their shoes. If you had reached out to a business owner and you were still thinking about working with them, and you weren’t completely sure, how many times would you want to be followed up with, how many times would you want to be contacted after that initial call?
Try to keep that in mind because I think it’s a little too easy to come off as pushy as the business owner. If you think about yourself in the inquirer’s shoes, that really puts a different spin on it and it also helps you stay a little bit more authentic and true to yourself and the core values that you can then bring into your business.
Another thing to do is think that they honestly might come back because we found that this happens.
So at the beginning of last year, when we started to push our VIP days, we got tons of inquiries, and I think it was because it was a lower-priced option for people to work with us. But we found that with the lower price option, so many people were inquiring and ghosting, only to come back to us later on.
Lastly, remind yourself that it probably just wasn’t a good fit. If somebody ghosted you, you never know, if they had ended up working with you, maybe they would have ghosted partway through the project or maybe they would have ended up being a problematic client and showed you a lot of red flags that you didn’t see in the initial inquiry process.
So I always try to tell myself everything happens for a reason. There’s probably a lot better of a fit of a client coming down the pipeline in the future who will be reaching out to us.
Again, remind yourself that getting ghosted happens to the best of us. It truly is not always something you did and again, it’s just part of running a business, right? So it’s not always the best feeling when it happens, but you’re not alone when it comes to ghosting.
Well, there you have it! That’s what to do if a client ghosts you.
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KP’s design journey began in book publishing, but she fell in love with the truly limitless possibilities that web design presents. Since then, she’s been helping photographers and creatives become the no-brainer option for their dream clients before they even get on a call.
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4/24/23
Published On:
Krystianna Pietrzak
