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Foreign. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Kate Show. All right, so today I am talking about your leads. And if you have been in business for 10 minutes, you've probably noticed that some people love to contact you, act interested, and then ghost you. So if your leads are ghosting you, especially after you've done all the work of talking with them and sending them a proposal, I have some answers and insights for you that you might find helpful. Now, let's just kind of walk through a scenario together. A homeowner contacted you. It seemed like a great fit. You spoke to them on a discovery call, which led to a paid on site consultation where you discussed budgets and timelines, their needs, their wants. Awesome, right? You went back to your office positively elated, put together the proposal and sent it to them, and then they ghosted you. They won't respond to your emails. They won't call you a month later. Maybe they reach out to say no to the project, or they say it's not a good fit right now. It's more than we wanted to spend. Or to quote those annoying people pleasers, we might reach out again in a few months, but will you? Karen, really? You're frustrated and discouraged. The proposal aligned with what they said they wanted to spend. So what went wrong? Well, today on the show, I'm explaining why leads keep ghosting you and how to prevent it from happening again. Now, obviously, we can't prevent every situation, but we can prevent a lot of them. A lot of that power is in our hands as business owners. So just a reminder, guys, you can stream this episode on YouTube, you can watch it on Spotify, you can listen on Apple podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts. And if you haven't yet, I would really appreciate it if you could leave me a rating and a review on Spotify and on Apple podcasts especially. Feel free to leave a comment or a follow on YouTube, but what I'm really looking for right now are more reviews on Spotify and on Apple. All right, guys, so let's just dive into this. If your leads are ghosting you, it says a little bit about them that we'll go over first, but it says even more about you and your process. So the lead. Let's go over what the ghosting process says about them. Well, they probably got nervous because they really couldn't afford the budget they gave you, which is them being dishonest to you and themselves. Or they're not as serious as they implied. Or they're still in the research phase. Fine. But annoying. Or they're not good decision makers and they want to get the input of other people first. Other people meaning not you. And do you really want to work with a person like that? Probably not. Also, it could just be that the time between meeting with you and receiving the proposal was too long and their excitement has cooled down. So that is actually pretty fixable on your end. But unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know, there are a lot of other things that are within your control to help prevent this ghost scenario. So let's talk about you and your process and your marketing. There is a chance if someone is ghosting you. You didn't make it clear on your website that you have a project minimum. Now, some people are scared of putting pricing on their site. This is something I do not understand because of course there's no way you can say, oh, a kitchen always costs 150,000. No, but you can say that your starting price is 5,000 or 10,000. I've seen 50,000, I've seen a hundred thousand. Because it tells people right away that you're not here to mess around. Now, maybe you are in a position where you'll take any project even if it's like one wall of one room, and that's fine. But if that's not what you want, if you're trying to get bigger projects, you do need to set a project minimum. You can list it on your services page. You can also list it in the contact form that a lead fills out because it will then give them like multiple choice option or a dropdown menu that says, you know, what's your budget for this project? And make sure the lowest budget possible is your starting at price so that they can't choose something smaller. And if it's just too much for them, then they're going to stop and they're not even going to bother you. All right, so the next thing that you might be struggling with is you didn't qualify the lead by asking for their true and firm budget. How is this different from what I just said? Well, if a client says, well, I don't have a budget, or I don't know yet, it could be genuine. Like they don't know how much things cost, or they're afraid if they tell you a number, you're going to max out that number. So here's what you need to do. You need to help them with this decision. You should be prepared to give your lead a good, better, best investment range, complete with some sample images of each for the type of project they want to pursue. With you. Now, this is why having a project specialty is very helpful. Because if you do all things for everyone, you're going to have a really hard time coming up with a good, better, best scenario that's relevant to them. But if you're specializing in kitchens and baths, or in whole homes, or in a type of home in particular, like modern farmhouse or whatever it might be, or if you're an organizer or if you're a home stager, like, you can give good, better best scenarios based on the size of the space, the number of rooms, how much of an accessory investment there is versus not, and then once you present that to the client, they'll be able to better clarify which investment range they can do. The other issue you might be having is that you sent the proposal to your lead via email instead of presenting it in person. So an interior designer on one of my marketing mastermind calls shared this really awesome tip earlier this year. She explained that she makes the proposal an actual event at either her studio or her client's home. She starts the proposal presentation by reviewing the scope of work they discussed and the problems that would be alleviated. She reminds the client what they told her that they don't like about their space and what they wish was better. She then briefly summarizes how she'd approach the situation. Now, this is key. Like she said, and I firmly agree, if you give your client too much information, they are going to turn off their ears and, and their brain so that by the time you get to the end of your proposal presentation, they will have no idea what they're paying for. They'll just think that's too much. You have to keep it surface level. You don't have to go into the actual elements that you're going to be using. You'll need to show them a lot of pictures. You'll need to make it kindergarten friendly, okay? Not because your clients are unintelligent, not because they have a low iq, but because this is just how the human mind works. Lastly, my. My client shared that she ends with telling them about the investment. And she has said that this works well because she's able to address any pushback or concerns right there in the moment, which leads to a much higher potential that she's actually going to get that job. So you can read the room. You can tell that the husband is like, oh, this is too much. And you can say, hey, you look like you're starting to sweat over there. Tell me what you're thinking, what's wrong? Just like address it. Point Blank. You'll be able to tell if they're like, yes, this is awesome. We just realized that we have to push it out by a couple months. You can say, okay, well, here's what we can do now to prepare for that so that this is not just a bunch of wasted time and this whole proposal doesn't just get tabled and potentially forgotten about. Now, I have shared this advice with my clients and some of them are like, yeah, but I'm just selling a bundle of hours, like as an organizer or something, so it wouldn't make sense for me to go back to their house just to say, here's how many hours it'll be and here's how much it will cost. And I agree. But there is a workaround. If your project is a bundle of hours and not a full out proposal, you don't need to present it in person because you should have already stated your bundle prices in person during that first meeting or provided an estimated range of hours and rates during your consultation. So again, financial budget conversations need to happen in person as much as possible. And if you aren't awkward about it, your lead will feel more comfortable too. The next thing you might be struggling with is that your proposal or estimate does not have an expiration date, which means there's no deadline or for the lead to take action. Your expiration date should be about 30 days, maybe up to 90 days from when it was issued. Now, this is common practice. It should be more common than it is. But for example, I just got an estimate back from my carpet guy because my husband is, at the time of this recording, working on finishing 1200 square feet in our lower level. And he said, this estimate's only good for 30 days. Fantastic. I get that. We want to keep moving too, and if we were slow to make decisions, we'd have to start the estimate process all over again. And that just tells me that I need to respect his time. All right, so now the final issue that you might be running into. This one is really the most involved to fix. And it is your perceived value is too low. Which, you know, a lot of people think, oh, they rejected my proposal because the price was too high. That's rarely the case, honestly. To quote my recent podcast guest, Kathy Pace, who's a brilliant sales strategist, and you can check her out@kathy pace.com by the way, here's what she said about it on her own blog. She said, when clients hesitate to commit, it's easy to assume it's a price issue. You might think If I could just lower my prices, I'd close more sales. But discounting can actually undermine your value and make it harder to sell in the long run. I agree. You've heard me say this many times. She goes on to say, instead of lowering your price, increase your perceived value. Here is how Create a premium experience. Clients aren't just paying for the product or service, they're paying for how you make them feel. Every touch point should reflect the quality of your brand. Honestly, I feel like Kathy and I could be or should be sisters because we are totally on the same page with this perceived value stuff. She also says, guide with empathy and expertise. You are the expert and your clients need to feel that. Show them how your expertise will save them time, stress, and frustration. Communicate value with confidence. Don't just explain what you offer. Help clients envision the transformation. Show them how their home will feel when their project is complete. The Takeaway it's not the price that sells, it's the perception of value. When you stand firm in your worth, your clients will too. So again, that's from Kathy pace.com she was on the podcast a couple episodes back. Brilliant woman. I may have to have her back. She just had so many interesting and helpful insights to share, and I highly recommend that if you have not listened to her episode yet or gotten on her mailing list, go do that. All right, but what do we do about the leads you have right now that are currently in the process of ghosting you? Well, a couple things. First of all, add them to your mailing list and make sure that you're sending a newsletter one or two times a month so they don't forget about you. Don't let your business suffer just because you suck at follow up. Okay? But you can't just follow up with the individual again and again and again because they're going to get annoyed and feel like you're stalking them because, well, you are. So instead, just put them on your mailing list. If they don't like it, they'll unsubscribe. Now, if they've only recently ghosted you, say in like the last four weeks, and you've done all your due diligence, it's time to send them a what is your intention? Message. And if they don't respond to that after a week, set them aside, make sure they're in your mailing list, and move on with your life. I have had to send the what is your intention? Message more than a few times, especially lately, because for whatever reason, 2025 has brought about, as one of my other clients described it, wishy washy leads. And I think it's just because people are a little bit uncertain about tariffs. Now you're listening to this in the summer. I'm actually recording this the end of March. So right now tariffs are up, down and all around. And I'm not saying that's good or bad. You'll have your own strong opinions on that, I'm sure. But it just brings a level of uncertainty to a lot of people and that interest rates and that impacts everything. So it is what it is. And also, even if we didn't have this interesting political economic climate, there are still going to be washy people, wishy washy people in this world that will drive us nuts as business owners. And sometimes we have to just cut to the chase. So here is an email that I send to my leads when they're starting to act like they're going to get into ghosting territory. I'll say hi, I haven't seen a reply from you regarding the blank Whatever project you said you wanted my help with. For scheduling purposes, I need to know what your intentions are. If you plan to move forward and just need more time. Please let me know if you've decided to go elsewhere. Also, please let me know. I greatly appreciate your professionalism by responding to this email. I hope you're doing well. Sincerely, Kate now let's break this down for a second. Okay, so I start off by saying I haven't seen a reply from you in regard to the whatever project you said that you wanted my help with. This reminds them that this project was their idea in the first place and that they contacted me or you. Now I go on to say, for scheduling purposes, I need to know what your intentions are. So this is a legitimate reason for needing to know. It's not desperation. It's like, no, like, like tell me, because this affects how I'm going to run things on this end. Because obviously if we're going to work together, your project is important to me and if I don't make scheduling accommodations, it's not going to go well for you. Then I say if you plan to move forward and just need more time, let me know. If you've decided to go elsewhere, also let me know. So it's not just a oh, let me know if you're interested. No, it's let me know even if you're not interested. And then I go on to say I greatly appreciate your professionalism by responding to this email. AKA if you keep ghosting me you're really unprofessional. Okay? And it's actually true. Like, just completely ignoring someone that you reached out to is, like, ultimately immature. And it makes it look like you're disorganized. It makes it look like you. You're just. You don't really have it all together. And it could be. There could be a lot of things going on with your clients. They could have a death in the family, they could be sick, they could be traveling for an extended period of time, and they didn't let you know. There's a lot of things that could be going wrong for them. And you don't want to, like, get angry, but it's okay to be firm and explain why you need an answer. But like I said, after a week, if you still haven't heard from them, then just move on. It doesn't. Doesn't really matter. They may not have been a good fit anyway. Now I find it's helpful. Like, when I send emails like this, I'm usually sending them through Honeybook. I can see if they've opened the email or not. And it just makes me laugh when I have to send an email like this and I see that the client has been opening every email I've sent. They just won't respond. It's like, okay, well, maybe you're shy, maybe you're scared. Maybe you're. I don't even know. I have no idea. And I don't want to assume, but it has crossed my mind a few times to say, ps, I can see you're opening these messages, so why are you being silent? Not going to go there, because that's just silly. But it. It's funny. And I amuse myself that way when this happens. And thankfully, it does not happen a lot. But every business owner does deal with this to some degree. So it's nice to at least know what you should do. But what should you do going forward? Because obviously if you can stop all of this from happening, you would, right? Well, it seems like the heart of it is to make sure your process is good and increase your perceived value. You need to make the experience of interacting with your brand a luxury experience by doing a few things I'm about to list. In fact, I think I've got, like, 10 things. Yeah, 10 things. Okay, number one, define your ideal client. Let me tell you guys something. Almost every interior designer and organizer will say that they specialize in helping busy or discerning professionals. That means nothing. Okay. Other people will say, I specialize in helping make your space look like you and reflect your values and tell your story again. That means nothing. Everyone is saying that. And even if everyone wasn't saying it, it would still be meaningless. You need to figure out the emotional reason your ideal client wants to hire a designer, an organizer, a stager. What feeling are they hoping to alleviate and what feeling are they hoping to experience instead? You need to sell that, not your services. Now I understand it's easy for me to sit here and say that, but this is why I do marketing audits for people that have never worked with me before. It's totally free. This is why I do ongoing consultations with my clients. Because there is a way to do this. It doesn't require talking to someone like me constantly. Usually it requires one or two conversations before bingo, the light bulb turns on over your head and suddenly you understand how to talk on your website and in your marketing in a way that your ideal client will feel seen and heard and they'll learn how to trust you so much faster. That leads to the next thing. Ensure that your website talks about your ideal client clients and their pain points more than it talks about you. Most websites in the home industry just dive into talking about the business owner or the business itself or the services that are offered. And I get that. However, it completely misses the mark and this is why a lot of people have decent looking websites that actually aren't converting or attracting even any clients. The other thing that you need to make sure is that your leads and your past clients and your colleagues don't forget about you and what you do. The best way to prevent them from forgetting about you is again by sending a newsletter once or twice a month. I am going to die on that hill because it works. My clients have landed millions of dollars in projects from it. I personally have grown a very successful business because of is so valuable. Like social media is not even a talking point anymore. Social media has proven not to be effective for the home industry and email marketing has. So if you have not gotten on the email marketing bandwagon yet, what have you been doing? All right, number four, Keep your marketing focused. So one topic per newsletter which should always be relevant to your ideal client. One clear call to action that directs them to your contact form or to book a discovery call. Don't make your email newsletter about going to somewhere else to read a blog post that you wrote or a little update about what you did at High Point or something that sends them oh, go check out my side door collection. Go check out my favorite things over here. Go check out My Instagram? No. People who do that will often say email marketing doesn't work, but it just means they weren't doing it correctly, quite honestly. Okay, so the next thing you need to do is make sure that all new leads are indeed going to your mailing list. You can automate this from your website. If you're using Honeybook or Dubsado, you can also automate it. You can do it manually if you really want to, but that just means there's a good likelihood somebody will forget and then you'll have all these leads that you never really followed up with. And that's a problem. The next thing you need is a lead magnet on your site that offers information that a qualified lead would want to have, such as an investment guide. Because people always want to know how much is this going to cost? And that's a great place for you to talk about the value that you bring. Meaning like the emotional transformation, the daily lifestyle experience of working in a space that you have organized or designed or whatever. This is not a good time for you to put out a color quiz, find your design style quiz. It's not a good time for you to put out a shopping checklist. Those are all very DIY focused. And if your goal is to get the non DIY client, then you need to make sure you're not scaring away the really good clients by acting like you serve DIYers. Okay, uh, the next thing is make sure your website has really good on site SEO. And by the way, just because you've run Google Ads or you've hired SEO done in the past does not mean you have good SEO. If you're like, well, how do I know then? Well, a couple ways you can use an online grading tool for SEO, you can also, and you should be reviewing your Google Analytics every one to three months. Most of your traffic in Google Analytics should be coming from search engines and from direct URL. Search engines should be one of the top three, if not the very top one. And you should understand what keywords are bringing people to your site. Is that actually what you want them to be? Is that what you want to be ranking for? Are you ranking for anything? Are you just focused on showing up for like one keyword, like what? What is your plan here? And then you also need to, for extra SEO oomph, consider blogging once or twice a month. Now, it's optional. I have plenty of clients who run successful businesses without blogging, but they all do email marketing, they do some sort of outreach, they do some sort of follow up. But if you do decide to blog, make sure the topics are relevant to your ideal client and their pain points and that they talk about how your services can help. The next thing is keeping your sales process high. Touch. So as much as possible, the professional who will be doing the work should be the one taking the discovery calls and consults should be in person. Proposal presentations should be in person. Or if your client is remote, you could do it on video. It's not as good, but it's better than just emailing it and then you can email them the proposal after you've presented it to them. So that's 10 things you can do going forward to help fit fix the problem of people ghosting you. Because a lot of reasons that people ghost us are on us. They are within our capability as business owners to correct. So we need to do that through our marketing and through our processes. All right, guys, that is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for watching, listening. Don't forget to give the show a rating and a review. And until next time, keep your marketing simple, your message clear and I will talk to you soon.