Why good prospects ghost you.

If you’re like me, you want to make selling an easy process. I don’t want to put my prospective clients under pressure to make a decision. I want easy sales calls. I want discovery calls where the client just needs a little nudge to say yes. The last thing I want to be doing is having to cajole or arm twist.

If you like the sound of that, if you want more calls where people come ready to buy, we need to address a big elephant in the room - pitch shock.

Pitch shock is a sales term for when a prospective client receives too much information or is surprised by information. Pitch shock will turn your hot leads into ghosts. Pitch shock comes in many forms and we’re going to look at them in this article. In the Social Selling Accelerator, I often tell our members that they should post about how they help people. I advise them that one post per week should be an overt promotion, even going as far as including the price. 

Why? To avoid pitch shock. If you avoid communicating your offer clearly and concisely on a regular basis, you are creating space for your prospects to be surprised. That might sound positive, but it really isn’t. Pitch shock is a sure-fire way to waste your time.

Wouldn't you rather have leads that understand your investment? Wouldn't you rather have enquiries from people who like your process and methodology? You see getting a lead is one thing, but getting a lead where there is a good fit is another.

When you get leads where your price, process or solution doesn't fit their needs (or yours) is a waste of time. Getting lots of leads is great, but getting leads that like your process and are not deterred by your price is much better.

Pitch shock is something you want to avoid. If you add lots of new information in a discovery call, you’ll have to work harder to win business. Not only will it waste your time, it will slow down your sales process. New information or surprising information for your prospects will add more consideration time. You’ll need more follow up calls and your conversion rate on calls will be much lower.

The number one reason for being ghosted by prospects is pitch shock. You're prospects were interested until they realise what you were really selling. I get lots of cold emails promising me the earth, many of them offering surreal benefits. They offer 'don't pay until' deals all to get you on a call - truth is, sure they get calls, but such a tiny percentage will convert because on the call the prospective customer will likely discover what's really involved.

So let’s look the sources of pitch shock and how to avoid them:

The Price Shock

Price shock is simple. Your prospects are surprised by your price. You can have a great conversation which goes cool pretty fast because your prospect didn’t anticipate your price. You said £5k, they thought £500. 

If you create price shocks (yes you create it) you’ll be confused by why so many people seem interested and then go cold. It will make you question your price. You’ll start thinking that your audience won’t pay £5k.

When a prospect encounters a price shock, they will usually pretend to still be interested, they want to avoid things getting awkward. In reality, they need to either go away and think about the price more or it’s out of their range. For those who need to think about it, it will mean you’ll need a second call. For those who it’s out of their range, you’ll probably be ghosted in your follow up.

Truth is, you created this price shock. You can make your life a lot easier by getting your price out into the public domain. It might feel uncomfortable, if you choose to withhold your price, don’t be surprised, if people are surprised. If you create a shock, your sales skills to help the prospect overcome them need to be top notch.

If you want easier calls, get all your information out into the public domain. Post about your offer and include your price. Tell people it’s a four-figure investment. Remove any doubt about how much you charge.

A tell-tale signs you are creating future pitch shock:

• No posts about your offer on your feed.
• No offer promotion in your featured section.
• No indication of the price point of your offer.
• No overview of your process anywhere.

This will put some people off. It will reduce the number of calls that will go nowhere. It will also mean people are coming to calls with an understanding of the investment they need to make.

Here are some examples of preventing price shock:

Post a direct promotion

Once per week, post your offer and include your price. Most of your buyers will need to see your offer 7 or more times before they actively consider buying it. So, providing as much information about your offer in the feed, will help the education process, without it, you’ll risk them misunderstanding the investment required.

If you want discovery calls which are easier to convert, you need to post about your offer and price to reduce the friction and potential shock.

Show the cost of inaction

One of the perks of posting is that you can say things which are much harder to say to a prospect face to face. You can use your content as a way to counter bad thinking or potential objections. When it comes to price, you also want to show prospects that doing nothing is not an option. 

It’s one thing to show results and success - social proof, but you also need to help people see that doing nothing has a cost too.

When I am posting, I’ll often talk about how many people spend too much time on LinkedIn trying to win business than they need to. It becomes a full-time job. I openly share that you can generate leads in 45-minutes per day. I talk about how unsustainable it is to be spending 2 or 3 hours on LinkedIn every day. I tell people that won’t work long term and why. You need to do the same. You need to show not only you’ll make their life better, but also how staying as they are is more painful.

Use your posts to show the cost of inaction, show how frustrating it will be to maintain the status quo.

Process shock

Process shock is what you think it is. Your prospects want the outcome. They want the end goal, but are surprised by how you expect them to get there. They like the sound of the outcome but are nervous about the way you’ll get them there.

Again, being brutal, if prospects have this, it’s your fault. You’ve not shared about your process publicly, there isn’t enough buyer education happening, so, you’re wasting time on calls or elongating your sales process.

Get it all out into the public domain. Openly talk about why your approach works, explain your process - make it obvious. It continually surprises me how often I tell people this, yet, when I look through their feed, it’s ambiguous what exactly they are selling.

This ambiguity is created from fear. The fear is, if you tell people the problem, the process and the price, people might not want to buy it. The fear by getting particular on your offer is that it will appeal to less people.

The reality is, getting specific will decrease the time wasted on leads which will go nowhere and you’ll get more calls with people who are serious. Being open and specific is a repellent and a magnet.

• Share social proof, which explains your process.
• Explain why your process is so effective.
• Share your opinions on why other methods aren’t as good.

Too many options

Another way you can create pitch shock is by creating too much complexity. Creating too many options will cause a paradox you really don’t want. The paradox of choice is something we all experience. If we have too many options, we struggle to choose.

A complicated offer or service will make it harder for your prospects to make a decision. Anything more than three options will likely confuse people and force them to say the dreaded words “let me think about it”.

Packaging your services into offers - gold, silver, bronze, to use the classic example and providing a comparison will make it easier for people to understand what you do and help them see which package would work best for them.

Visually displaying the difference between services in this way will help people see in advance the benefits of each package. If your packages are out there, you can also ask them if they have seen the details and skip a lot of conversation and move to why one package is more interesting than another.

Final Thoughts

If you want an easier sales process. Use 20% of your content to educate your audience on how you help people. Spit it out in as simple a language as possible. Sure, the post won’t be your most successful if you are measuring my likes, comments and impressions. That’s not its purpose. Its purpose is to help the people who can buy to understand your offer better. Every time you avoid doing this, you are choosing to complicate your sales process.

You’ll get better quality leads, better quality conversations by educating your buyers on what you offer. They might not be the best performing pieces of content, but offer education posts will help your audience understand how you can help them.

You need to aim for people to have read about your offer at least 7 times. This is the point where they have a degree of education about what you do. Before this, you're calls will likely be educational. I see this in my own business, on my email list, people who have been there for 3-6 months convert more easily than people who've just joined. 

They have more education and more trust.

Don't make it harder for yourself, share you offer as part of your content, let people see it, investigate it and learn about it.