Apparently it takes between 12 and 17 touches before a prospect engages with you. A touch being a call attempt, voicemail, email, ping and so on. I’ve heard varying numbers around that, but in any event it’s a lot. And there’s a load of reasons why they don’t engage with you before then:

  • They’re not interested
  • They’re not around
  • They’re too busy
  • They have other priorities

Even if you happen to pique their interest, still they might not respond, which is for another reason:

  • They can’t retain anything!

Your average crazy busy prospect is so busy skim-reading everything that even if they do want to act on something but don’t do it right away, they forget about it. Even if they have a vague recollection of something they wanted to act on, they can’t remember who the email was from or what the subject line might have been.

So you have to absolutely catch them with good topics and good timing, when they can follow the AIDA process through in one go. Awareness – see the email; Interest – read it and be engaged; Decision – decide to take action; Action – they actually take action, in your favour, hopefully.

17 touches…