Day 1: The haunting begins
I should have seen the signs. The event had gone too well. Our booth was packed, demos were flawless, and conversations flowed effortlessly. Every handshake, every nod, every I’ll follow up soon felt like a promise carved in stone. I walked away convinced—we had done it. We had won.
But then… they started disappearing.
Day 3: The silence
The inbox? Empty. The CRM? Hollow. The calls went straight to voicemail. It was as if the leads had never existed at all. I stared at the dashboard, refreshing repeatedly, an unrest creeping within, for proof that it wasn’t all a cruel illusion. Where did they go?
Day 7: Desperate measures
I tried everything. Resending emails. Tweaking subject lines. Even the breakup email—the “Hey, just checking in one last time before I assume you’ve been abducted by aliens” one.
Nothing. No clicks, no replies, no signals of life.
They were gone. Ghosted.
Day 10: The investigation
I played back the event in my head—the enthusiasm, the nodding, and the handwritten notes I had taken because I knew they were serious leads. So why weren’t they responding? Then it hit me: Because I waited.
Three days. That’s all it took for them to forget. My leads weren’t dead… they had moved on.
The redemption: Bringing leads back from the dead
This will never happen again. Not on my watch. Now, we follow up before they leave the booth. Personalized, immediate engagement. A real-time score, a tailored microsite, a reason to remember us before the next vendor dazzles them.
And you know what? The ghosts… they don’t haunt me anymore.
The lesson
Event leads have the attention span of goldfish. If you don’t engage immediately, you’ll be chasing ghosts.
But sometimes, late at night, when my inbox is too quiet… I swear, I still hear them whispering: “We’ll be in touch soon.”
