“Are they ghosting me?”– How to Deal with Silence from New Clients Without Freaking Out

Have you ever had a conversation with somebody about potentially working together, or even collaborating together, and then all of a sudden it's radio silence? And you think to yourself, “are they ghosting me?”

If so, this post is for you.

It can feel really weird when you are having a conversation with somebody and all of a sudden you aren’t hearing from them anymore — including in business. 

Maybe you've had a discovery call and it seemed to go pretty well. Or you pitched to be on somebody's podcast and you got a positive response at first. 

I mean, sometimes we have those times where we pitch ourselves for something or we have a conversation and it's just really awkward the whole time, and then you don't hear anything – that makes sense. 

But it feels so much worse when you thought it was a slam dunk and then, all of a sudden, it’s silence.

Thankfully, there are ways to change how we read that silence and what we do about it. 

In this post, I’ll cover three ways you can change the stories you tell yourself about ghosting to keep you in the driver's seat and hopefully even save the situation!

Story Shift #1: We forget stuff!

Have you ever done the thing where you think about taking an action and your brain confuses that for actually doing the thing? 

Like where somebody has sent you a message and you're in the middle of doing something else but you read the message anyway. You think, “Great! She’s going to be on my podcast this Saturday and I need to get back to her with the link to schedule.” And your brain checks off that to-do list item and it disappears. Even though you didn’t actually send her the link.

In fact, as I'm writing this, I'm now doubting if I actually ever replied to my friend Melissa on that message she sent me a few weeks ago. Did I just reply in my own head?! Oh, it's so awkward and awful to think about!

Because we’re not trying to be rude. We just lose track.

But when we don't hear back from somebody, we (read: me) start to mentally spin out, even though we know how easy it is for things to fall through the cracks.

Here’s another version of this: 

We are actually in the process of doing the thing. We're sitting at our desks and we're ready. 

And then something happens, right? Like the dog barks in the other room or a kid needs you or whatever. 

And then by the time that you get back to your desk, you just completely space. You're onto your next task. And then days can go by. And it's just not Top-of -Mind anymore. 

And this could even happen when you’re the one who's hiring someone. 

Let’s say you’re having a contractor redesign your website. But then you have a couple of really crazy busy days. It's not that you don't want to work with them anymore. It's just that other things have now taken urgency in your life. And from their perspective, they're wondering if they are being ghosted.

So picture yourself in that moment where you are on the receiving end, wondering because you thought you were going to start working together. The conversation was great. You got everything set up, sent the invoice… and now it’s not paid. 

Does it mean they’ve changed their minds and don’t know how to tell me? Are they annoyed? Are they mad? Did they find someone better or cheaper?

And we go on and on and on just making up stories in our head!

Instead of letting your head run away with all these anxious stories, remember: people forget things all the time! It doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad.

Story Shift #2: Tech isn’t perfect

Let's say I've sent someone the stuff to start working with me, and I haven't heard from them in a few days. I look on their social media and nothing tragic has happened, right? They're not in the hospital or whatever. 

You can just message them and ask if they saw the message! 

Because many, many, many, many times I've reached back out to somebody and asked if they saw the original message, and they say “No!” Sometimes it’s in spam or whatever.

Technology is not perfect. 

Especially If you're emailing from your business email, sometimes those end up in the promotions or spam folders. And especially like on Facebook, if you send someone a DM, and you guys aren't connected as friends, it will go to their other folder. 

So what I always like to do after a few days of quiet, is just reach back out on a different platform or tool where I can connect with them that isn't email, and I just check, “Did you get the email?”

So they either are able to find it or they are able to reply right there. Maybe things were tough at home and you can reassure them that it’s cool and no worries. Maybe it got lost in spam and they can let you know they finally found it and things can keep moving forward.

Story Shift #3: Sometimes it is ghosting, and that’s not about you

Sometimes it really is ghosting.

I have noticed in my many years of business that especially women--because we are culturally trained to want to be liked and not disappoint people-- have a hard time saying no when the answer is no. Sometimes people really feel super uncomfortable and opt to disappear.

Yes, we would rather get rejected than to just be in this weird unclear space of being ghosted.

But sometimes it will happen. 

Just remember, it's not necessarily a reflection on you. 

It doesn't mean you suck. It doesn't mean they hate you. It could just mean that they are so petrified of disappointing you that they would rather give you silence than a direct answer.

How to handle it when it happens to you: Just move on.

Maybe in six months or a year you can loop back around and maybe their situation will be different and they’ll be ready to work with you. 

But truly the best thing for you is to just move on. Make peace with it.

And then commit to being a person who gives the direct no. 

Take this as a lesson for yourself: don’t do this to other people because you know how shitty and awful it feels when it happens to you.

Always remember to follow up - because you never know

No matter what the situation is that’s led to the awkward-feeling silence, it's really, really important to follow up with people, because you never know what’s actually going on on their end.

Always assume best intentions. Don't imagine worst case scenarios.

I would suggest creating a timeline for yourself. Now that might be you follow up with them in a week, or two weeks, or a month or three months, or six months, whatever it is, whatever makes the most sense for you, for your business, for the situation.

You don’t have to be all up in their business every single day until you hear back from them.

Maybe they really are in the middle of something massive right now. And they're not sharing that publicly, and they just can't get to it. And maybe you follow up with them in a week or a few weeks. And that time is better for them.

A Story

I had an amazing client I worked with last year, and I just adored working with her. But getting started was rocky. I thought it was a sure thing and then it was just eternal silence.

Periodically, I would follow up here and there over the course of the summer. And eventually, she wrote back to me to let me know she’d been traveling and didn’t have the bandwidth to reply at the time but was ready now!

But before I’d heard from her, I had made my peace with it. I kept moving on and just doing my thing and working with other new clients. And then she came back around! 

So never write anyone off entirely. You don't want to burn that bridge, send a nasty email, slander people in public, because you never, never know what’s happening for them. 

Allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised!