Striking a balance between persistence and disturbance!

[Iimitk]

It was a cold call, to begin with.

But the prospect client was pretty interested and eager to talk. He said that they used to have a website, but the web shop screwed big time and they had to shut it down at the end. Now they need to start over.

I directly asked for a meeting. He agreed, and asked me to call him on Saturday (start of week here) to arrange that.

I called on Saturday, no reply! Called again several times during the day, still no reply. I did the same on Sunday, still no replies.

On Tuesday, he called, apologized that he has an urgent family matters and promised to call 'within two days' to settle this all down. It's Saturday today, still nothing. I'm beginning to feel like I'm wasting my time and should move on.

Should I move on? Or keep persistent on landing a job with that prospect, and risk being hitting a dead end?

[dnordstrom]

In my opinion, it depends on a few things:

• How much do you need the work? Do you have other prospects?
• Do you have the time to keep chasing the prospect?
• If you consider the prospect unreliable, would you still want to work with him?
• What do you feel like doing? How much stress does this cause?

Personally, if I had no other leads I might spend some more time chasing him. But if I did have other work to do, and more leads to follow up on, I'd move on but keep this prospect in mind until/in case he comes back or I want to call him at some point in the future—for now, I'd simply let him come to me instead of the other way around.

[Sagewing]

I got annoyed just reading the post! I think you need to be more gentle if you are going to cold call and otherwise approach clients forcefully. It sounds like your whole interaction with this potential client lasted around a week - not very long.

Give the client time. Persistence isn't the same as pushiness.

[Iimitk]

In my opinion, it depends on a few things:

• How much do you need the work? Do you have other prospects?
• Do you have the time to keep chasing the prospect?
• If you consider the prospect unreliable, would you still want to work with him?
• What do you feel like doing? How much stress does this cause?

Assuming that I need the work much, does that mean I should pursuit the client relentlessly? My goal is to keep myself on his mind rather than proactively keep contacting him beyond what I've already established.

I got annoyed just reading the post! I think you need to be more gentle if you are going to cold call and otherwise approach clients forcefully. It sounds like your whole interaction with this potential client lasted around a week - not very long.

Give the client time. Persistence isn't the same as pushiness.

Point taken, but they were only 3 calls on a single day, other than the initial cold call.

Since the day he called back and promised to contact me within few days I never called him again.

From my experience, when a client is initially very welcoming and then suddenly don't contact back or just call it all off, other factors are playing a role in that, like other employees convincing him to bid the job for someone else, etc.

But I agree, maybe a week is just too short to make any assumptions.

[Ravedesigns]

A week is definitely not long enough to get a real good handle on someone.

Anything could have happened - whether a personal emergency or someone else's he was helping out with - so I'd be persistent especially if he seems like he wants to talk, but I don't think you need to call someone more than once a day.