Why You Get Ghosted After Sending a Proposal
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Brooke Greening: I just got ghosted again.
Like I didn't, I spent so much time and I was so excited to send this proposal out, and then I didn't hear anything from people.
If you do not have that set up before you send the proposal out, you are going to get ghosted on a regular basis.
This is the first time someone actually cared about our business in this proposal. Like we've never even received a proposal before that wasn't about themselves and how great they were.
Scott Greening: Welcome to another episode of Sippin' Matcha and Helping You Make More Sales, where as always, we think about a question that Brooke has gotten, either that you've submitted at buildingmomentum.info/matcha, or that's come up in her coaching conversations as she works with clients throughout the country.
And so let's bring Brooke in today for our conversation and question. How are you today, Brooke?
Brooke Greening: I am doing great. How are you, Scott?
Scott Greening: I'm, I'm doing much better. I had a little bit of an episode this morning, but somehow I managed to leave the house to drop our daughter off at daycare without doing my hair.
Which is, you
Brooke Greening: get that Einstein look. Yeah. It like goes. It goes.
Scott Greening: Yeah.
Brooke Greening: Okay. So just so everybody the tens of thousands of people that are listening to this podcast, I did not send you out on the house on purpose. I did not. I did not even look. But that is how I keep you to myself. So none of the ladies,
Scott Greening: yes, I dropped her off.
I'm
Brooke Greening: going after you
Scott Greening: came to the car and looked in the rear view mirror to not hit someone and then realized, oh. I don't think I did my hair. So it was great. All right, let's love it. Let's let's talk to moving on about that. So that's how I avoid talking with people. Some people out there are not being talked to when they'd like to be.
And so that's the question that we're dealing with today. So why do I get ghosted after sending a proposal? So this is our second, we're kind of doing a little series here on proposals and that, and we hinted at a couple of things, in the last episode, you can go back to the previous episode and check that out.
But something that often happens as you're working with clients and coaching them is they're like, I sent this proposal off and then... crickets, nothing. So why is that happening? What's going on there?
Brooke Greening: I love this. This is such a great question because part of my coaching is as I had shared, I'm certified through StoryBrand and I have been for the last five years.
And so, one that thing that I do is they ask me to onboard new clients. So people who have just gotten certified through StoryBrand. I am working with. For about three months or nine months. It just depends. And we get to talk about this, and this is really interesting 'cause we're coming from really smart marketing agencies, marketing, just really skilled in their marketing and they've been doing it for years and years and years by the time they've been certified through StoryBrand. And a lot of the times it's the same. It looks beautiful. It's really, it looks sharp, it's, they're talking about what they need, all of those things, but they're all of a sudden they're just like, I just got ghosted again.
Like I didn't, I spent so much time and I was so excited to send this proposal out, and then I didn't hear anything from people. And I believe there's about three reasons normally why that is happening. So I'm excited to be able to talk about that today so that today when people are listening, they can actually think about, okay, the next proposal that's going out, what can I do to make sure that I'm not going to get ghosted this time?
Scott Greening: Yeah. And last time we talked and you hinted at the idea that proposals shouldn't sell for you. They should actually be a reflection of it. And it is interesting. We. We get excited about sending proposals because we feel like, oh, finally, this is a chance to like really communicate what I do and all the amazing value that I can bring and all of that.
But that might not actually be super helpful. So what are the, what's the first reason why somebody might be getting ghosted on their proposal?
Brooke Greening: Yes, so the very first reason is what I feel is one of the most important and what I have seen happen time and time and time again, is when they have sent the proposal out and then they didn't hear anything and they were really frustrated.
But one of the things they didn't do is they did not have a date in regards. To the day and the time scheduled to review it with them in person. And when I say in person, that can be Zoom, that can be actually at their office, whatever the case is, but that you are looking at them face to face and you're able to review that proposal with them.
If you do not have that set up before you send the proposal out, you are going to get ghosted on a regular basis. Because we are assuming that they're just gonna take the time. They're gonna be like oohing and aing and like just reading our proposal with such vigor and that's not actually.
What's happening, and so we want to be able to say, Hey, I, I'm happy to. 'cause when someone says, Hey, send me a proposal, then we're like, great, I'll do that, and then I'll send it to you and then I can give you a call and we can see if you have questions. That's not what I'm talking about. I am saying before when they say, Hey, can you send me a proposal?
And I would argue we should be leading that conversation and helping them to know what that next step is. But if they come to you and they say, send me a proposal. Our response is, I'm happy to do that. The way that works is that I'm gonna send it to you, but before we do that, we need to set up a time that we can be able to review it in person.
If you don't have that, you will get ghosted.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And I know it's maybe like in a, like rules are made to be broken there, but no they're not. Well, yes, it's a little insight into our approaches to life, but, no, but I hear you tell your clients and coaching and maybe it's StoryBrand coaches that you're onboarding or whatever the case is.
This idea of Hey, never send a proposal with, without an appointment and mm-hmm. That's a really it's a difficult. If it's a difficult thing now we've sent, we've, you know, rules are meant to be broken and we've done it like in certain, like it's either I'm gonna have no chance or I'm gonna do this and send it.
But in most that is true.
Brooke Greening: And so that is a very true Scott. And so I know. That if it got pushed to that point, then they're just not, they're not ready to be able to move forward. And so you can choose to do that, but no, it's not going to be as effective as if you could have had a date and time set.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And our percentages on those proposals that get accepted when we do those things are much lower than the other case. Okay. So the number one and the biggest idea there is. Don't send them without a time and that mm-hmm. And usually you'll hold off on sending the proposal mm-hmm.
Until just a little bit before that appointment. Because you wanna review it with them basically together.
Brooke Greening: Yeah, I have had people say, please send it to me more in advance because they want other team members to talk about it and we'll, we're gonna talk about what that looks like because there is a difference if you are doing it one-to-one, like business to business owner to owner, as opposed to like business and it's a company and so there's multiple people involved.
We're gonna talk about what that looks like in just a little bit, but. If it's one-to-one, that's when you're gonna make sure that you have that appointment set. And even if it's one to many, you wanna make sure that, again, your proposal is not trying to solve things for you, it's not trying to sell for you.
It's a reflection of what you already talked about. And so that proposal is the next step in being able to move forward. And if they wanna be able to see things in writing, not, I'm trying to convince them to see the value of what it is, because that is why. That's when the ghosting happens. And so just continue to think about, okay, what is the purpose of this proposal?
So I always say send less proposals and make more sales. Don't hurt yourself in saying, okay, I'm gonna just send a proposal and spend all the time and effort. Even if you have a template, you're still spending time and effort and emotional energy when they're just not ready to move forward yet, that's not the time to be sending the proposal.
Scott Greening: Alright, so make sure you have an appointment. What's another reason why you might be getting ghosted? On your. Your proposals.
Brooke Greening: Yeah, so the next one is you don't have all of the decision makers and you don't know the buying timeframe. And so that's when we're talking about, okay, this is not the one-on-one.
This is when we're going into organizations and businesses and there are multiple people that are going to be involved in this decision, and that's when it can kind of go get stuck. What I wanna encourage you is you can't rework the way that that business operates, but you can in your sales conversations, and you should be able to understand, okay, who are the decision makers and where might these obstacles come into play?
And so the very first thing is like you're going to ask them as we've worked through the service framework and as we figure out yes, this does look like it would be a good fit. Then we're gonna ask can you help me understand how this process works for you in regards to the decisions that you make?
Because they may need to take it to a board. They may need to take it to other people. We wanna know that. And a lot of times we get ghosted because we didn't know that. And then two, we really wanna know who are the people that are gonna raise their hand and say, I don't want this. And that's something you can ask in a sales conversation.
You can just be honest and say, Hey, I get it. There's a lot of people involved. Usually there's one or two people that might have more hesitations than others, and they may say, no, this isn't what we wanna do. Who is that in your group? And I guarantee you, they know exactly who they are. And if you've built enough trust, they'll tell you.
And so then we can start to see, okay, what would their hesitations be? And then that's how we start to continue to work through that. So if you don't know the decision makers and you don't know what their timeframe is, you're gonna get completely ghosted again.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And you can ask to bring the other person or other people into the conversation.
Absolutely. Whether it's on that call or on a different scheduled call before you send a proposal so that they can be part of that. I know you encourage not to split decision makers, so that's
Brooke Greening: No, don't do that.
Scott Greening: Yeah. Yeah.
Brooke Greening: We have a whole episode on that of how that's a very. A dangerous thing to do, and it only puts you in a bad light.
It never goes well.
Scott Greening: All right, so, number one, you didn't have an appointment number two was, mm-hmm. That, that you didn't know who was involved in the decision and you didn't understand their timeframes. Any other reasons why you might. I mean, there's probably limitless, but another big reason why people get ghosted in your experience.
Brooke Greening: The other thing I want to share is because if we've. If we've sent the proposal out and we've made it all about us, that's another reason why we'll get ghosted, because that's not gonna be very exciting for them to wanna be able to move forward. And so what I mean is our proposal, again, should be a reflection of what our sales conversation was and where we're showing them.
We understand the problems that they're facing, this is how we can be able to help them, and this is how it's. This is what it's gonna look like for them. It's all about them to the point of even on the proposals, even having their pictures, their logos on it, that it doesn't just look like it was cut and paste from a proposal that you did the week before that it's.
It is directly about them, the problems that they've faced. So this isn't something that you can just generically put together. This is where it's specific to what they shared with you. That's how you're gonna make a huge difference because they have other proposals. 'cause if they've said, send me a proposal, there's probably five or eight other proposals that they're looking at.
So you wanna be able to continue to stand out. And if you make it all about yourself and how great you are and what you are going to do, they will get bored and they will move on. But if you make it about them and their company and their values and what they want, that's a huge difference.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And the way that you do that is using something like the service sales framework where you've realized where you've recognized there are problems and that, and then as you're Going through your proposal and talking with them on this appointment that you've scheduled and not failed to do you're also saying Hey, this, like using their actual phrases and their actual things that they said, and this is the part that answers that and those types of things. And so it's not just like a marketing piece that's out there, it's directly tody with your sales conversations.
Brooke Greening: Yeah, and I would say it's not just so, I don't want people to be like, well, yeah, but if you're a, 'cause I do work with quite a few marketing agencies that they're like, well, you're a marketing agency, so that would make sense that it would be prettier and that you could put other pictures of other companies in.
We do this for every client that we work with, so whether they're in it, whether. For you, Scott, when we were doing the down Syndrome Association of Ontario, when we did their proposal, it was about them, it was their logo, it, and it had nothing to do with their marketing or sales. It was all in regards to their strategic planning and organization of joining their.
They're groups together.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And so that, that allowed us to stay in the conversation and to talk. The guy that we were interacting had to take it to his board and get, it was a nonprofit. Mm-hmm. They had to get approval and do all of those things, but it all got set up because we knew their problems from the sales conversation.
We, we talked with them and we were able to present that and even address some of the. The issues that he knew that mm-hmm. He was gonna have to answer as part of this process.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. And he said, and we've heard this actually quite a bit, not because we're amazing people, but because this is just how we've built it.
And I take a lot of credit in regards from StoryBrand in regards to how to be able to build out your proposal. And every time we've sent out a proposal, literally the response is. This is the first time someone actually cared about our business in this proposal. Like we've never even received a proposal before that wasn't about themselves and how great they were.
And that's a lot of times what people want a proposal to be like. This billboard of all of the amazing things that they can do and who they are. And again, that is not the goal of the proposal. It is to emphasize or empathize and resonate with the problems that they're facing and showing how you can be able to help them.
And so even when you were working with that organization, they said, we got other proposals. No one seemed to care about us. But you did.
Scott Greening: Yeah. So if we wanna reverse these and people don't want to be ghosted, so what the positive instruction is. So set an appointment, first of
Brooke Greening: all, set an appointment, just date and time and re and just, it doesn't have to be confrontational, it's just I'd love to be able to send you a proposal.
The way that that works is I'll be able to send it to you, but let's set up a time where we can be able to review that in person. And if they say, no, no, no, I gotta work with somebody else, then that's okay. Then let's talk about who that is that they're going to be able to work with. Don't just send it blindly.
Scott Greening: Yep. Then number two positively is to, and you were kind of hitting at it there, include the others.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. In an inviting way, not a Okay, who's gonna get in the way of me making this sale, but like in regards to, I wanna be able to help you, but I know there's hesitations. From other people.
Can you help me to know who those would be and what those are? Yep. When we open the door and say I'm giving you space to be able to share where some of these objections could come from, all that does is build trust with the other people we're talking to.
Scott Greening: Yep. And then the last thing is that you wanna make it about them.
Mm-hmm. And not about you. 'cause if you make it about you. They don't maybe they'll like that. Maybe they won't. Maybe they'll want to keep talking, maybe they won't. And that, so
Brooke Greening: To be clear, it's not that it's not about you at all, but you are not the main star of the show.
If your proposal is mostly about you and all the great things you do, then we've crossed the line. It needs to be about them, the problems they're facing, and how you can help them be the hero of the day instead of you.
Scott Greening: All right. Well, I think we've got got some reasons there why people might be getting ghosted when they sent their proposals in that we would love to not be ghosted from you.
And if you've found this kind, see, hi, nice segue there. If you would, like this, comment, share. Give us a review on your podcast platform of choice if you've found this valuable. And we'd love to connect with you and hear from you. You can always share your questions at buildingmomentum.info/matcha, and we may work them into a future episode.
Have a great day.
Brooke Greening: Bye.
