Item — HN Reader

I’m interested in this question too, but here’s what’s worked for me. Mostly it’s about being completely up front and honest about what you want with clear deadlines for the next step from them for you to keep them around in your sales pipeline.

- be explicit about your strong desire to work together, but it’s ok if the other side doesn’t share the feeling

- ask the potential client early on to let you know ASAP if it’s no longer worth it for you to

- give clear timelines to keep a commitment on an engagement. If they don’t make progress by X date you’re moving on to other engagements

- if they disappear send a firm “thanks for your interest, sounds like the timing won’t work right now, we’re moving on...” email

1 comments

The latter two points in particular sounds like you think you're doing them a favour by allowing them to contemplate being your customer. There's a chance that might be the case if you're proposing exclusive partnerships or keeping loads of dev time free for them, but for the more standard case of selling a product, they don't care whether they're in your pipeline or not and they'll cheerfully ignore the deadlines you set for a commitment whether they're interested in buying the product or not. And whilst sending the "thanks for your interest, but we've got other customers out there" email might be cathartic, it's even less likely to elicit useful information than a "just wondering if you have a decision yet?" email, and more likely to put them off a purchase they were delaying over. Unless you're actually seeking an answer, you don't need to have the last word.

In general, if you want a better chance of an answer, pick up the phone. Sure, they might not answer and you might get in "a few months maybe". But you also might get a reason why it's no, a date they might be interested in it again, or the person that's taken over the job from the person that showed the initial interest.