Ghosting in sales feels like getting dumped. You put in the effort, things are moving along, and then you’re hit with radio silence. It’s frustrating and confusing. Worst of all, it wastes your time.
Here’s the truth: ghosting isn’t always about you.
It’s not a conspiracy. Most of the time, not hearing from a prospect comes down to one of a few reasons (none of which are personal).
Getting ghosted doesn’t have to be a heartbreaker. First, we have to define what it means.
Then, we should find out how prevalent it is, which helps us adopt a healthy mindset.
From there, after understanding why it happened and how to prevent it in the future, we can start building a strategy to minimize the likelihood of ghosting occurring again.
Why Prospects Ghost: Five Main Reasons
When someone ghosts you in the middle of a sale, it’s tempting to take it as a personal affront and imagine they’ve all gone directly to the competition. Or worse, maybe they’re in one big secret online Discord group where people share stories about the bad salespeople they’ve ghosted.
The reality: Ghosting is usually not personal. There’s no single reason people ghost. That’s why the first thing you should avoid is simple:
Stop making up imaginary reasons you’ve been ghosted.
You don’t know what happened, so stop filling in the gaps. Instead, get familiar with the myriad reasons prospects typically ghost salespeople:
- They weren’t committed to making a decision. Sometimes, people are just wishy-washy, and they know that you want a firm decision. “That’s why we keep continuous contact throughout the decision-making period, addressing concerns and keeping them engaged until they’re ready to take the next step,” says Adam Stewart, Digital Marketing Consultant and Fractional CMO at Digital Bond Marketing.
- Their needs or priorities changed. Maybe the prospect was keen on you, but something behind the scenes suddenly shifted gears. As Grzegorz Robok, CEO of ComfortPass, told me about a recent ghosting experience: “I sent one well-timed message: ‘I know things get hectic – do you still need this solution, or have priorities shifted?’ If they had internal issues, once those cleared, they came back ready to sign.” Long story short? Don’t take it personally.
- They didn’t see the value in meeting with you. This sounds like a personal rejection, but maybe it’s not. Sometimes, a prospect just needs to know you won’t waste their time with a meeting. And if they feel pressured into a meeting where they don’t see the value of spending time with you, ghosting is usually their way of getting out of shutting you down with a simple “no.”
- Internal budget constraints. Sometimes, people ghost you due to influences out of their control. Most common: money. Loris Petro had a great meeting with a client but got ghosted. But rather than assume the worst, Petro reached out with some empathy. After all, there may have been a valid reason behind it, like money. Petro’s message was simple: “I understand if now’s not the right time, but if you’re still interested down the line, I’d be happy to reconnect whenever it works for you.” The result was a closed deal a few weeks later.
- They’re waiting to hear back from stakeholders. Ghosting doesn’t always mean abandonment. Sometimes, it just means things are being held up on the back end. Gary Hemming, Owner and Finance Director at ABC Finance, said he tries to prevent this by setting a clear context for what the sale will look like upfront. “To avoid getting ghosted, we focus on qualifying prospects early by setting clear expectations upfront, especially when dealing with financing complexities,” says Hemming. This prevents many complicated back-and-forth processes from stakeholders feeling out of the loop.
This is just a sample of the endless reasons prospects might ghost you. The bottom line is: You don’t know what you don’t know.
Stop Getting Ghosted: 3 Improvements You Can Make in the Sales Process
First things first, it’s impossible to prevent ghosting altogether.
This might sound like a sour pill to swallow, but it could help you reframe ghosting in a much more positive light. If it happens to everyone, maybe you shouldn’t feel so bad. All you need are a few mitigation strategies.
Improvement #1: Keep Your Conversations to the Channels Your Prospect Uses
If your prospect prefers phone calls and you only ever DM them on LinkedIn, it creates unnecessary friction. It may be a matter of time before they ghost you.
Pay attention to the channels your prospect uses and take 90% of your conversations there. Pull the data from the start of outreach and note how the communication channel impacts response rate, speed, and more. If a prospect prefers phone calls, DMs, or emails, move where it makes sense for them and reduce as much friction to respond as possible. Don’t be afraid to ask how they prefer to be contacted and use it to keep them connected and interested in the relationship.
—Brooke Webber, Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches
The problem is, you can’t read prospects’ minds. How do you know where to best contact them?
Use a high-quality Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to track their preferences so you always know where they’re most responsive. Or you can simply ask them: “Hey, what’s your preferred way to stay in touch?” Add their answer as a note in your CRM, and you’ll always know the lowest-cost way to get them to respond.
Sometimes, the ghosting wasn’t because they hated you. They may have just hated the platform you used to contact them.
Improvement #2: Consider Pre-Call Assessments
Let’s take the step above and zoom out. It’s a simple fact: the more you know about your prospects before you touch base with them, the better.
“We require prospects to complete an assessment before getting on a call,” said Stewart. “This step qualifies leads and sets the tone, showing the potential client that both their time and ours are valuable.”
Gary Hemming agrees. “To avoid getting ghosted, we focus on qualifying prospects early,” says Hemming, “by setting clear expectations upfront, especially when dealing with financing complexities. For instance, we outline the approval process timelines and any potential roadblocks from day one. This transparency builds trust and helps us avoid unnecessary follow-ups.”
This might add some friction on the front end, but if you keep this process simple, you’ll avoid unnecessary headaches down the line. And it’s better for the customer, too. If you're responsive to their tastes and preferences, the rest of the interaction will help meet their needs.
Let’s get specific. What kinds of questions can you address in the pre-discovery phase? Here’s what Mor Assouline recommends on LinkedIn:
- Who doesn't feel this is worth pursuing/solving?
- Why do you think this wouldn't get approved?
- Does [other stakeholder] know we're having this conversation?
- Curious, what part of [this feature] do you feel might not work for you?
- When you take this back to [stakeholders], what reservations/concerns do you think they'll have?
Improvement #3: Set Clear Next Steps for the Sales Process
Have you ever opened a book intending to read one chapter but kept going because that chapter ended on a juicy cliffhanger?
A well-placed cliffhanger makes a book “un-put-downable.” And you want to be the same way in your sales process.
Maybe the end of your next sales meeting won’t be as juicy and dramatic as the end of Chapter Three in a bestselling thriller, but you can still use the same psychological effect to your advantage. Set clear expectations about what’s coming next. Make every meeting feel like the leaping-off point to the next one.
The simplest tactic to avoid being ghosted is to set expectations regarding each stage of the process. Therefore, after each meeting, one should have a date for the next one whether it is a follow-up or a demo or a decision. This way the prospect is assured that there is a next step, thereby reducing the chances of them disappearing.
—Chris Dukich, Founder & CEO of Display Now
Arvind Rongala, CEO of Edstellar, agrees with Dukich. “Make a plan for the next steps immediately and ask the client if that works for them during the first meeting,” says Rongala. “This makes them feel more dedicated and shows that you value their time.”
A customer should feel like they’re going on a mini-journey with you. And most people don’t like to abandon others in the middle of a journey.
Setting expectations for the next steps in the process is how you create this feeling—and prevent yourself from being ghosted.
After You’ve Been Ghosted: 6 Ideas to Save the Deal
There’s an old saying in medicine: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Ideally, you’ll use the tips above to prevent being ghosted in the first place, dramatically reducing how often it happens.
But let’s be real. It’ll still happen.
When it does happen, it doesn’t have to be a total, catastrophic failure. Lots of the people I talk to have solutions for ghosting after it happens. They’re happy to point to times when it worked, and prospects went from “ghosts” to paying customers.
Use Gifts to Re-engage the Conversation
Gifts? I know. It sounds like bribery. But gifts do have a fun benefit. They change the entire context of the interaction.
I was recently browsing a Reddit thread about re-engaging ghosted prospects, and small gifts can provide neat little excuses to reach out to a prospect again. Rather than asking for something, you can approach prospects with an idea—hey, I was thinking of you and just wanted to send this along.
Does it work? Not always. But as a Hail Mary pass, you’d be surprised.
We put together a small gift based on a small detail one of the decision-makers had mentioned, and then we sent it over with a brief note, recapping our understanding of their needs and how our solution could help. To our surprise, the prospect responded within hours, apologizing for the delay and thanking us for the thoughtful message. They signed the contract a week later.
—Parker Gilbert
Use a Low-Pressure Approach
Sometimes, ghosting happens because your prospect feels pressured into a decision. Maybe they don’t want to make a decision right now. Maybe they’re not able to. Whatever the reason, you won’t get them back out by applying more pressure. Instead, shift the context.
According to Loris Petro, the low-pressure approach can work wonders. Petro was dealing with a prospect who went incommunicado. Rather than ask “what’s wrong,” Petro did a context switch, similar to the idea behind gift-giving.
I didn’t want to flood their inbox with follow-ups, so I gave them a bit of space. A week later, I sent a message acknowledging the break in communication, saying something like, "I understand if now’s not the right time, but if you’re still interested down the line, I’d be happy to reconnect whenever it works for you."
—Loris Petro
The former “ghost” replied the next day.
Use Light-Touch Deadlines
There are two types of motivational tools: the carrot and the stick. The solutions above are carrots, but consider adding a bit of discipline to your approach.
(Using a light touch, of course.)
Paul Drecksler, Owner of Shopifreaks, said “light-touch deadlines” have worked for him. These are little invitations for quick decisions, which he says “nudge things back on track without making it awkward.”
“Sometimes,” says Drecksler, “silence is just about timing—people get busy. In those cases, I’ll offer them a chance to defer or opt out for now, which surprisingly brings more responses than you’d expect.”
Send a Light, One-Sentence Email
It doesn’t have to be all that complicated most of the time.
Josh Braun said that it can be as simple as a question. For example, he might ask a prospect, “Have you gone in a different direction for the workshop?”
And that’s it.
Naturally, many “ghosts” won’t respond. But the key to this approach is that Braun uses a positive interpretation to feel better about the ghosts.
Says Braun: “If I don’t hear back, it’s a gift. I can now spend more time with people motivated to change.”
If you’re willing to use a similar interpretation, just one light question can be all you need to move on from ghosts.
One other quick note on this technique: you’ll notice that Braun phrases his questions in ways where he wants to trigger a light argument. If his prospects didn’t intend on abandoning him, their instinct is to say, “No, I haven’t.” This can sometimes snap people back to attention.
Use Workflows to Automate Your Follow-Ups
Following up on ghosts is the easiest solution—but if you have a lot of ghosts in your CRM, doing this manually is a drag. For Adam Stewart, the solution is simple: automate.
“Just like how a doctor sends reminders,” says Stewart, “we automate both email and SMS follow-ups to confirm meetings.”
The key? You need CRM to handle this for you, automatically dropping in the occasional follow-up email if a lead’s gone cold. This takes away from your manual labor, of course, but it also means you’ll automatically give each prospect some space and time to reply if you let the CRM handle it.
Try Being Curious
If all else fails, get curious. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it likely won’t kill your sales.
This is another “context switch,” which seems to be one of the most consistent ways to get people to reply. If you engage your prospects with curiosity about what happened, the context switches from trying to make the sale to a post-mortem. And you’d be surprised how often this wakes clients up.
Michael Nemeroff, CEO and Co-Founder of RushOrderTees, says he’ll do this because the curiosity framework is a genuine way to approach relationships. “When you treat prospects as multi-dimensional people and stay curious,” says Nemeroff, “you build more genuine relationships, making it less likely for people to ghost you.”
Getting Ghosted Sucks, But Using These Tips Makes it Suck a Little Less
I’m not going to sugarcoat it: getting ghosted sucks.
But if you try to prevent it—or find a few new tried-and-true methods for getting out of it when it happens—it doesn’t have to be an inevitability, either. Some prospects will always ghost you, and you may never know why. That’s the nature of the sales game. But if you know some techniques to switch the context and re-engage them, you might be surprised at how many people are happy to reply.
In most cases, it’s never personal. So don’t act like it is. Instead, try something else—a little generosity, a little curiosity—and see what happens. The ghosts might surprise you.
Fortunately, we know of a CRM that can automate these good habits so you get fewer ghosts and close more prospects. Sign up for a free demo of Close to see how it works to create automated workflows to put what you just learned into practice.
