- prioritizing solutions over customer problems
- "what -> how -> why" instead of "why -> how -> what"
- not taking risks nor responsibility for failure
- not taking advice from other people
From my solely experience as a freelancer/entrepeneur what I've found out about potential customers ghosting is that these potential customers are so close to the Crocodile Brain (or Lizard Brain) [0] that you may have to treat them like so. My secret sauce is to shorten conversations and always think about the next thing to reply before even starting a conversation:
1. build a diagram for a single conversation
2. draw branches for every positive and negative potential customer replies
3. optimize your diagram to shorten negative conversations (so "wrong" customers won't feel chained to your interactions and are able to leave at will)
4. try to visualize the Happy Path [1] to conversion from potential to customer and fragment it into a couple of conversations with clear start-finish-accomplishment marks so you can gradually build every potential customer profile and really know whether they're really interested (coming back spontaneously) or not (leaving while replying, so you know the reason)
Make sure your potential customers can always get out of conversations at will (showing they're not who you're looking for) and remember sometimes conversations get awkward enough that people just won't know how to get out of it and just do it anyway - leaving without a reply
Especially in bigger companies, decisions to buy a product take a lot of time. Department A likes your product and starts asking detailed questions. Department B gets wind of that and feels that A is trying to get on B's turf. Department C knows that A will be reorganized soon and will no longer need your product, but can't say that openly yet. Heated internal meetings ensue. Management gets involved. During all this time, you will get slower and more vague responses. Maybe some budget cut strikes. Managers fight about the prioritization of projects. This can take weeks.
