The kiss of death in outbound marketing happens when your prospect or customer asks your representative to send information.
Why is this a bad sign? A potential customer’s request for information may seem like a logical step during a call. But let’s go through a simple example to see how a typical scenario plays out.
It’s a day you’re making phone calls, and you get your possible client live on a call. You begin to engage in a conversation and the prospect tells you to send more information. You confirm how he or she would like to receive the information – postal mail, email, etc. You also confirm a time and day to follow up. You may direct your potential customer to a link. You send the requested information or arrange for it to be sent. On schedule, you reconnect.
In the best case, the prospect has read your information. This person ideally now has questions or is ready to proceed to the next step.
From experience, it’s likely you find this is a highly improbable scenario. In most cases, your prospect receives the information, but never finds the time to review it. The interaction between you and the requested details and the prospect has stalled or is reduced to the question: Did you review the information?
Here are three reasons why this setback may be happening and two process improvements you may want to use in response:
- The potential customer probably asked for the information as a way to politely end the call.
- The prospect may have been truly busy and had interest but timing was not right for him to engage in a conversation.
- The prospect likes to review information on his/her own time.
Regardless of the reason, these responses are most often a polite way to end the call.
Here are two suggestions to best handle the request for more information, regardless of the reason.
- Find what’s most relevant: Let your possible client know you will send the information but would like to send information relevant to his/her interest. Ask your contact what interests him or her about the topic you called to discuss. This will either allow you to better understand the need or problem or open up a discussion.
- Find another time to learn the issues: Let the prospect know that you will send the information requested but offer a time to share greater value in a brief discussion about their business issues. Ask if he/she would like to schedule a better time to talk.
These are a few techniques, based on my own experience with outbound prospecting (you can check that out more here) to get you past what I call the “send me literature” objection. We would like to hear from you in the comments – what’s your experience?