QOTW: What do you do to re-engage clients who have gone dark?

What I’ve done is create a Ghosting list that I share once a month to our executives and it has our client list along with the frequency of how often check in calls occur ( we are very high touch) one of our success pillars includes regular check ins with our champion.  When those start to fall off or no shows or client asks for monthly or quarterly it’s a red flag. We check usage but if the calls stop and they ghost us that’s a big churn indicator for us. 

I love that idea of a ghosting list! How do you keep that up to date, @dana_slapfive? Is it a google doc or something where anyone can add to it if a client meets the criteria or is there a report you can pull? I’d love to know! 

Also once you have that list, have you found a silver bullet in getting people to hop on a call to re-engage?

Yes a Google doc. Simple !

Sometimes that’s the best solution! Keepin’ it simple! 

First I think about who is losing engagement and if there was an executive sponsor above them. Usually we’re working with a team who has been delegated the project and the actual owner/signer is much higher up (i.e. C-Suite). When we start losing engagement I’ll try to have the sales team push the C-Suite so my team can maintain the relationship with the project owner and let the C-Suite be the bad guys.

Great idea on looping in the executive sponsor, @rondeaul! It’s always a good idea to keep that line of communication open because the customer signed for it and there was obviously a need for the pain point you’re solving. So when the progress slows down, it’s good to make sure you have a way of notifying the executive sponsor so they can put so fire under the pants of the point of contact!

When a client doesn’t respond to my emails or phone call attempts, I send them a meeting invite. People calendars are sacred and when you put time on their calendar, they respond. I would recommend creating standards for yourself to follow so you don’t abuse it. For example, I give my clients 2-3 attempts via email before I send the meeting invite.