“Sure Mr. Prospect, and thanks for talking with me today. To be clear, you’re suggesting I follow-up with you in a few months, right?”

Sound familiar? It should, it’s the same conversation countless B2B sales professionals have all the time.

You’ve managed to make initial contact and the conversation – usually on the phone – goes from lukewarm to reasonably well, yet there is still no concrete connectivity. We’re just another voice on the phone, another cold caller and as such, we have no providence what so ever.

How about this?

“I like the presentation you made and it’s something we probably should be considering. That being said, we’re about to conduct a strategic review”

or;

“We’re thinking about changing our commitment to that end of our business etc. so now isn’t the best time. Why don’t you follow-up with us in Q3?”

Again, a more than common exchange. Now what? Q3 could be weeks, or months away. You hang up the phone – or leave the meeting – with that dreaded feeling of despair. You know that within minutes or hours, you,  your importance,  and any memory of your ideas for this new potential client will evaporate into the abyss of … “I don’t remember that guy”.

By nature, most people are trusting and take others at face value. When someone tells us that they’ll “keep us in mind”, or “let me consult with my colleagues”, or my absolute favorite … “I’ll get back to you”, we believe the statement to be genuine. In fact, it may well be. The problem isn’t the other person’s intent – which for all intents and purposes was probably good – but rather, your status or station in that person’s life.

In all likelihood, it won’t be long before this prospect becomes embroiled in the melee of their existing challenges, and therefore, their focus and attention will be consumed by these activities. Most other things, including you, become a distant memory.

One of the principle tenets of selling is to maintain control of the processes that are part of the selling cycle, and that leads us to open ended vs. closed ended.

The difference between being open ended vs. closed ended lays in maintaining control of the communication continuum.

This is much easier done once you’ve become dynamic, that is, once the client has engaged past the threshold of no return. Maybe they’ve involved others in their organization with the idea you brought forward, maybe they have already committed resources towards working with you, etc.

At this point, you have status and station.

The front end of the cycle presents a different conundrum. The prospect said “they’d get back to you”, or they asked you to “call next week” but never answers the phone, returns messages, or emails.

So, how can we change?

There are some simple best practises that any sales professional can utilize to help ensure that they, and their agenda are kept alive and healthy;

1. If a prospect asks you to call back in a “few months” or some other vague period, make sure you turn the open ended into the closed ended. How? Make a point of saying when you’ll be calling back and get buy in from the prospect.

2. If you are asked to call back within a short period of time, again take out the vague and close it down. Ask for a date and time for that follow-up, and if at all possible, get the prospect to commit and book the follow-up call or meeting.

3. When the prospect says they need to “consult with a colleague” or “get through this quarter”, try and quantify with the prospect when they expect that task to be completed, and then ask to schedule a meeting directly following.

4. When a prospect says to me they “should have a better idea next week”, I always respond with “Ok, why don’t we talk on the following Tuesday, how is 2:00?”

While there is no assurance the prospect will accept or honor the  appointment, or have completed the task, it still establishes a target date and creates a dynamic that accelerates the process to an actual point of action. Should the prospect not be any further ahead at the next appointed time, they will at least have to acknowledge that they missed the commitment, and they’ll likely re-commit to “having that meeting”, and best of all, usually in a much shorter time span.

Open ended usually leads to “hurry up and wait”. No business plan I know of incorporates ambiguity, or “it will happen when it happens”. Most business plans outline not just objectives but timelines for those objectives to be achieved. One look no further than quarters, periods, or year ends.

The same principles need to apply to the processes you engage to achieve those objectives, and that means turning the open ended into the closed ended.