A sales team sends a proposal on a Tuesday. Nothing comes back. Two weeks later somebody sends a message asking whether they had a chance to look at it.
Nothing comes back from that either. The lead is marked closed lost and the team concludes the price was too high.
The buyer was waiting on a budget decision that landed six weeks later. By then nobody had been in contact for a month and a half, and they bought from the supplier who was still around.
Step 1: find out why it went quiet before assuming
Priority change, budget timing, an approval, annual leave, a reorganisation. Almost none of these are a decision against you and all of them are recoverable.
Step 2: agree the next step before the conversation ends
A date, a specific action and who is doing it. A conversation that ends with let me know is a conversation with no mechanism for continuing.
Step 3: make the first follow up useful
Not a reminder that you sent something. An answer to the question they raised, a relevant example, or something they can use internally to make the case.
Step 4: make it trivially easy to reply
A question answerable in one word. Still worth pursuing, or should I close the file. Buyers reply to that far more often than to an open ended enquiry.
Step 5: space them sensibly
A few days, then a week, then a fortnight, then a month. Increasing intervals respect that the buyer's timescale is not yours.
Step 6: change the channel occasionally
An email that goes unanswered four times is an email problem. A different route reaches somebody whose inbox is simply beyond saving.
Step 7: send the honest closing message
Assuming this is not a priority now, I will stop contacting you unless you get in touch. This produces more replies than any other follow up, and it is the one nobody sends.
Step 8: keep a long term route open
Somebody who was not ready in March may be ready in November. A low frequency, genuinely useful contact keeps that possible without pestering.
Step 9: recognise the account changed hands
Where a contact has left, the enquiry has not disappeared, it has moved to somebody who does not know about you. Finding them is usually worth more than another email.
Step 10: track why each one actually closed
Not a guess. Teams that assume price lose the chance to fix timing, process or a missing answer, which were the real reasons.
Step 11: revive the old ones deliberately
A pass through last year's closed enquiries is frequently the cheapest pipeline available, and almost nobody schedules it.
Step 12: handle the specialist version of this carefully
Some enquiries need particular sensitivity when revisited, which is the ground in follow up for legal enquiries that went quiet.
Step 13: start from a properly qualified record
Following up an enquiry you never understood is guesswork, which is why the qualification in qualifying inbound leads without a long form matters before any of this.
Step 14: automate the sequence and keep the judgement
An assistant that acknowledges instantly, captures the timescale, sends the useful follow ups on schedule and flags the moment somebody replies means nothing goes quiet through neglect. That daily discipline is described in morning follow up routine, and the weekend version in weekend leads and monday morning follow up. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under b2b.