The Prospect Three-Strike Rule

I received a question the other day and I wanted to share it. The question was – What happens when you don’t get a call back?

We know how that goes; somebody’s interested, somebody’s all hyped up, they want your product, they want your opportunity, but you contact them and they don’t answer. Or, what happens when they’re interested in the products and you set a time to follow up and they’re just not there.

What do you do?

How many times do you continue following up with them?

I thought this was a great question.

First of all, you want to make sure that you confirm a time before you set the follow-up.

You don’t want to say, “Here, check this video out and I’m available to talk in five minutes” to have them say, “Let me see, let me watch this video first,” and you reply, “Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

You have to set a specific time. Remember, professionals run by their calendar. I always say that Network Marketing if you want to build a big business you got to treat it like a big business. We don’t just walk into a doctor’s office and say, “Hey, I’m here, now give me my exam.”

We have to set schedules.

Let’s say you’re talking to a lead and you tell him, “I’m going to send you this video, you can go through it and then I’ll answer all of your questions. Are you available tomorrow at two o’clock? I’m going to give you a call, and we can go through whatever it is that you need an answer to.”

Here’s the three-strike rule.

I do three strikes. Three strikes and you’re out.

This is all going to go back to having posture and running this as a profession.

Here’s the first strike: You call and they don’t answer because most of the time they’re not going to answer. So, you call and you leave a voicemail. “Hey, it’s Julie. We had a two o’clock call. Give me a call back at your earliest convenience.” That is strike one.

Then, it’s 24 hours later and you haven’t heard from them. So, you call again. I do this in a 24-hour span. Let’s say you got their voicemail again. I would say, “Hey, we were supposed to have that call yesterday and I didn’t hear back from you. I hope everything is okay. Listen, if you’re not interested in what I have to share with you that’s totally okay, just let me know. It’s no big deal. I look forward to hearing from you.” That is strike two.

Let’s say that you still don’t hear back. Remember, these three calls are all within three days. Okay, so what you’re going to do is call again, and if they don’t pick up you leave another message and say, “Hey, it’s Julie again. Listen, I’m going to ahead and mark you off my list. I’m going to assume you’re not interested in this anymore and it’s totally fine. We don’t want to waste time with people that don’t want what we have to offer.” I would continue on and say, “You’ll never hear from me again unless you want to reach out. I want to wish you well and I’ll talk to you later.” That is strike three. You take that person off your list.

Here’s the thing, most people don’t want to be marked off a list. So, you’re going back to a posture card, because you don’t need them.

There’s so many people out there. Think of your product, think of your opportunity, think of all your solutions, and think of the billions of people. I don’t want you to just get stuck on this one person.

I see this often. I see somebody that gets so held up on that one person, “I know I can help them. I know I can help them,” and they want to keep hounding them. We don’t want to do that. We are professionals and we are marketers and we’re here to help people, yes, but we are not here to hound people.

You have to start thinking in abundance and not in scarcity, because as you’re sitting here worried about that one person while 20, 30 or 40 people could pass by that need what you have.

It’s three strikes and you’re out.

The one message that gets the most feedback is when you say, “Hey, are you okay? I just want to make sure everything’s good, because we had a time scheduled yesterday and I didn’t hear back from you, so just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” When you show them that you don’t need them, and you have that posture, it brings back the power to you. You’re saying, “Listen, it’s cool. I don’t need you. I was offering this to you, but I’m going to move on now.” You’ll probably end up hearing from them. It really does work.

People want to know what the secrets that have helped me be successful. This is it right here.

I’ve never spent more than a couple calls to reach out to somebody and then I let them go. I’ll tell you they do watch, and they come back around you guys. They do. I hope this helps.

Just stay strong. Keep going. Keep moving past people and worry about the ones that want what you have. Don’t spend time with the ones that don’t. If you found value in this, share this information with your team. Remember, duplicate throughout your team. Share this and let me know what you’re struggling with.

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