We’re Just Not That Into You — Surviving This And Other Letdowns From Potential Customers

As a startup founder, you are probably spending a fair amount of time in sales mode. For those founders without prior sales or business development experience and pre-sales hires, the process can be unsettling and confusing. It’s easy to misread feedback and, as a result, prioritize your sales opportunities sub-optimally.

Like job hunting and fundraising, the sales cycle has a lot of similarities to dating. Here are a few signs that you may want to give up on a current sales prospect and spend time on other opportunities in your pipeline:

You never hear from them

You have what you think is a good meeting. Then they don’t return your calls, texts, or emails. Maybe they even said they will “be in touch shortly,” or “email you next week to set up a next meeting,” or “have to have you back in to meet the head of the division.” But all you’re hearing is crickets — real ones, not ringtones. Should you give up and move on?

Not necessarily. Just because they haven’t called you back doesn’t mean they’re not interested — unless they’ve told you so in so many ways, in which case you may want to call it quits (see below). Follow up periodically according to any timetables they may have provided, and don’t take it personally if they’re slow to respond. Your contact could be traveling, have a fire drill, or a bigger priority project to address. The deal could also be held up in another department, and your contact either doesn’t have visibility, can’t dislodge it, or is a poor manager or communicator. Companies (and people generally) do not exist solely to buy your product.

So how do you know if they’re really not interested, or, to quote Billy Crystal, they’re desperately interested but trapped under something heavy?

• As quickly as possible in your interactions, understand your contact’s priorities, and what will make them successful. It gives you better insight into how to sell your product, as well as important information about timing and other initiatives that could affect the sale.
• Find out at the beginning what their purchasing process is, and how you can avoid any potential pitfalls. Does it need to go through procurement, and at what price point? Will it go more quickly if you use their form of contract instead of yours? Who needs to approve it? Are there particular deadlines when budgets go away or become available?
• Have multiple points of contact across the organization, each of whom can provide you more visibility, insight, and, if needed, a communication channel — or even a better path forward. Think of it as asking that roommate or best friend for advice on what’s going on behind the scenes….is (s)he really not into me and using that class project as an excuse, or is the paper the real deal? Better yet, if you bring a colleague with a different skill set to establish different points of contact, e.g., technical and sales, you both can gather intel, like having your best friend ask his or her best friend for the real status or advice on what your next move should be.

All of this requires a lot of listening — and digestion of what’s being meant, in addition to what’s being said. And after all that, if you’ve done all you can and you’re not hearing anything at all, it’s time to find your next prospect.

It’s not you, it’s them

When you connect with them, you may hear some phrases that don’t bode well:

We enjoyed meeting you and your product is really interesting, but we haven’t built out our side to support it.”

“Looks great, but we won’t have budget for another six months.”

“Have you met Joe in Department X? This sounds like something he might want to see more than us.”

“Super cool stuff, but we’re going through a reorg right now and aren’t prepared to focus on this.”

If you hear these types of things, take a moment to ask another question to see if you can parse out their level of interest. (Would they go out to dinner with you another day if they weren’t busy? Or, as my grandmother used to say, they’re just “never hungry.”) So, for example, you can ask, “I understand you think this requires a lot of support, but if the integration were quick, easy, and low cost for you, would you be interested?” to gauge where you stand.

If they continue to provide more reasons for why it won’t work after several rounds of troubleshooting, take them at their word. It doesn’t mean the sale is dead, though. Check back in six months when things have changed. Talk to Joe in Department X — he could very well be interested and your contacts may be trying to find you a home. But don’t push your deal here anymore now. They’re not ready to commit — for whatever reason.

They want you to change for them

They’re very enthusiastic about moving forward with a deal — if you can do a few extra things that aren’t on your spec sheet. Then you see the list, and it looks like they’re describing another company! This is going to be a lot of custom work — with no guarantee they’ll be happy with it….

Ask yourself, is this “self-improvement” you were already planning (like finally quitting smoking) and now you have additional motivation? Or are you twisting yourself up in a pretzel (literally, like scheduling plastic surgery) trying to be something you’re not in order to satisfy this one customer, who may not appreciate what you’re offering?

If what they’re asking is on your roadmap — or it should be to make your product more functional — or if it will serve multiple markets well, then you’ll likely want to move forward. “Changing” for a partner doesn’t mean adding features that satisfy individual and customer market needs, using their legal form instead of yours, or lowering pricing to get the deal done — unless it puts your company at unreasonable risk. There’s a difference between reasonable accommodations and product or business model mutation. Make sure you’re staying true to yourself.

You give and give, and what are you getting back?

One sign that you’ve given away too much and that you haven’t stayed true to yourself is when you’re not getting much out of the relationship. Perhaps they weren’t really interested in the first place. But you thought that if you showed them how wonderful you were, that they’d come around eventually and fall in love with your product. Now it’s months later, you’ve worked so hard, and they’re not moving forward as as quickly as you’d like with the purchase, if at all. How ungrateful can you get, after everything you’ve done for them?!

As I’ve written before, sales is a series of little negotiations. Whatever you try to structure, your prospective customer needs to prove they’re appropriately invested at every step of the way. Don’t sell yourself short and agree on the ground rules. Is it working for free to get feedback so you can refine the product further, with no expectations of a contract? Or are you asking for a commitment they were never intending to give you in the first place?

Closing thought — play the field

The rule of thumb is that you should have three to five times the prospects in your pipeline for every deal you want to close. Pursue multiple options. Parallel process. Don’t get fixated on the deal that’s going to be perfect and solve all your problems. Keeping your options open and developing a robust pipeline of potential customers not only will give you more intelligence to inform your product roadmap, but it will give you more confidence when pitching and negotiating, so your relationships are positioned to be the best they can be.

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Originally published at karenroterdavis.com on October 29, 2015.