Finding and then contacting a potential customer is only the start of a successful sale. Oftentimes the process stalls due to a lack of strategy
by the salesperson.

Selling your company's services to a new client can be a frustrating game of waiting for the phone to ring after first meeting with a prospect who expressed interest. Paul Cherry, the president of Performance Based Results and the author of Questions that Sell: The Powerful Process for Discovering What Your Customer Really Wants and Questions that Get Results: Innovative Ideas Managers Can Use to Improve Their Team's Performance, offers this advice to help avoid the frustration and silence.

1. Set up a specific time for the next meeting, before the end of the first meeting. Instead of agreeing to call a prospect "in a couple of weeks" you need to be firm about setting up the next meeting. You can say something like, "I am so glad we got to talk. So we don't have to play phone tag, let's pencil in a time and date that would work for us to reconnect on this issue. Would you like me to come to your office again, or do you want to talk over the phone?" Using this tactic holds both parties accountable by setting a date and time for your next meeting.

2. Establish the agenda for the next meeting, before the end of the first meeting. Once you set up the next meeting, you should follow up by confirming what that meeting will entail. You might want to ask a question such as, "To ensure that our next meeting is productive, what should we be prepared to address as our next step?" This question allows you to probe a little further and uncover what the prospect expects to happen during the next meeting.

3. Ask your prospect to do some homework before the next meeting. You want the other person you are meeting with to have some investment in the process, otherwise it is too easy to blow you off; so ask your prospect to do some sort of "homework" before your next meeting. You could ask him/her to gather some data, bring another person in on the discussion, or anything else that requires them to invest time, money or resources into the relationship.

Salespeople sometimes fall into the trap of being non-committal, as their schedules get busy and it's hard to keep appointments. But too often it comes back to haunt them. Without commitments on each and every call, you lose the formality and structure of a business relationship. You would never expect your doctor to say to you, "Ok, it was nice to have you here for these serious medical tests. I'll keep in touch." We expect our doctors to set appointments, have formal follow up and come up with a plan of action. The same should be true for sales professionals. When ending a meeting with a potential new customer, you want to be as proactive as possible. By following the three steps listed above, you ensure that you will no longer be waiting by the phone hoping for a prospect to call.

If you have put these following steps into practice and are still encountering unreturned phone calls, you may consider the following scenarios:

1. Is it you? If you routinely encounter situations where you feel like you are being ignored or avoided, you need to consider why this keeps happening. Are you cold calling people who simply do not have enough interest in your services? Are you talking to the wrong people within these organizations (people without the power to make decisions or people who don't feel the business pain)? Is your presentation style off-putting, do you talk too much or bore people? Take a good hard look at your process so that you can figure out what is going wrong and how to correct it.

2. Is it them? If a potential client does not call you back, your mind immediately goes to what you did wrong. But many times, the person who is unresponsive has other things on his/her mind. Maybe he/she is afraid to bring in a new service because if things do not go well it will reflect badly on him/her. To avoid this scenario, make sure to ask your potential customers (during your initial meeting) about any concerns they might have or any issues they think might come up. Then you can help alleviate their fears by discussing the results your services have been able to deliver to other customers.