Why prospects go into the ‘black hole’ and what to do about it

Abstract

Many organisations are investing heavily in marketing without seeing the results on the sales side. When prospects go into the ‘black hole’ the negative impact is exponential. There is a loss of not only sales revenue, but also time and money spent through the marketing effort. This paper addresses three critical components to engaging qualified leads: building more meaningful connections, shortening the sales cycle and closing a higher percentage of the time. The foundation is an understanding of mindset, both of buyer and of seller. There is ample evidence that people buy on the basis of emotion, then justify their decisions with facts and logic. The core beliefs of the seller also play an integral role in the process. Mindset drives the message that ideally builds a meaningful connection that gets stronger through the sales cycle. On the other hand, communication can be wildly ineffective when the seller has unaddressed blockers and/or does not fully connect to the buyer psychographic. From mindset and message, the final component addressed here is method. As the final piece of the sales success puzzle, ‘method’ includes the flow of the sales process, as well as the types, timing and cadence of communications.