One of the biggest problems that we face as recruiters and marketers is  a client or candidate who is not really ready to buy. Sometimes it seems as if they are wasting our time and we feel compelled to make the sale.


When we work with our old habits, we pick up a phone or an email blast, we take a chance on finding a candidate who is not in a state of mind to buy or to respond to us. The timeliness of the sending isn’t right. The phone call catches him or her at a busy time when they aren’t ready to respond and certainly are not ready to buy into what we’re offering.


In many cases we send that broadcast out, or that social media flash, or make the phone call. We hope to catch the fish in a buying frame of mind. Most of the time we don’t. In 75% of the cases, we’re wasting our time and we’re wasting theirs. How do we avoid that?

The Answer is Automating the Process.

Automating the process ensures that the people who attend are at least considering buying. Even if they aren’t they just want good information and if you offer it, you’re going to stick in their mind.

You hold an event, you bring in the people and you have a good solid event with a lot of attendees. Typically , about 70 percent are not ready to buy. 20 percent may be on the fence and only 10 percent are really ready to buy, but you’ve spoken to all of them. Every one of them saw your message and hopefully you’ve established yourself as someone who has a few answers for them. You’ve planted the seed.

Where Do You Go From Here?

The webinar or whatever else you’ve done is not the end of your game. The key  is in your follow-up and every attendee, despite their position of readiness deserves a follow-up.

Why Do You Need to Follow Up?  What’s in it for Me?

We do a good follow-up  in order to provide consistency in our communications. It puts us into a position of trust with the client, when they see us always offering the helpful information and always offering good information. I’ve often found that when I follow up with a customer, he or she is quite surprised. Even if they were not ready to buy, I send them something or offer them some bit of information that may be helpful and many of them are surprised that you’ve taken the time and the initiative. It makes you different from all the other marketers or recruiters out there and that may well be the biggest and best reason to do it.

That keeps you in a position where you are building rapport with the client, the customer or the potential client. Building that rapport, whether the client is ready to buy or not ready to buy, you want to stay in front of them.

How Do You Follow Up?

The answer is to implement a process whereby you are continually in front of the client, offering them just what they need exactly when they need it.

The key to how you follow up with your attendees or how you market yourself even to those who are not ready to buy is to make sure that you’re adding value to the marketing.

Give good content and differentiate between those who are ready to buy and those who are not ready to buy.  The way that you do that is to offer real value even to those are not yet ready to close the deal. Engage them, answer their questions,  position yourself as someone who is an authority in your field, who knows a lot about what you do.

Engage your Customers and THEN Sell.

Don’t try to just jam a candidate down their throat if they aren’t ready. Engaging your prospective customers is the best way to get them to become customers.

Even if they don’t call you for weeks, continue to engage those prospective customers.

Give them value and keep yourself in front of them. When they are ready to buy, you’re going to be foremost in their minds. Being a salesman consistently isn’t a workable answer. That is especially true if they are not ready to buy. Then you’re just the high pressure salesman who is an annoyance.

If you instead present real value, good information and quality engagement with the prospective customer, when they are ready you’re going to be the first person they call.


Or if you are hungry for this now and want to get started immediately schedule a 10 minute discovery call at www.rmi.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php to see how you can apply inbound one to many strategies in your business now.

Andy Whitehead