You put yourself out there - gave it your all - put on your game face - matched benefits with solutions and still the phone doesn't call.

How long do you wait for the phone to ring after sending a proposal to a perspective customer?

On today's MSN Dating and Personal section there is an article "Don't Wait for Him to Call."

The target audience is a single woman whose given her phone number to a new man and sits by the phone waiting for it to ring. As I read through the article, not that I'm one of those women, I realized that some of the same advice the author, Elsa Simcik, gives can be used in business.

I currently have seven proposals in the hands of potential customers. Some of the customers I have worked with before and some I've not. Some are for big jobs and some for smaller freelance writing jobsbut all are important to my business.

How long do you let the proposal sit out there before following up? When I first started my business I would only have one proposal out at a time. I had very few customers and my life revolved around their every move. I'd send a first draft of an assignment and then wait by my computer for an email accepting or rejecting my efforts. Minutes would pass from the time I hit "send" and I would hear nothing. Hours would pass as I waited for a response and still nothing.

They hated it, I would think.

Worse yet, they hate me.

I'm finished.

When I would finally gather enough courage to pick up the phone I would learn that...surprise, surprise, they had a business to run and that's why they hired me to do their writing - they had lots of other stuff on their plate. Although what I had written was important so were the 90 other things they had to do that day.

The time table we have often isn't the time table of our customer. I've had customers tell me they need a project rushed and completed within 24 hours only to have them wait two or three weeks to read it and provide feedback. It reminds me of the one-hour dry cleaning we crave only to leave the cleaned garment for a week before we retrieve it.

So in reality the proposal has been received and it sits on the desk of my hoped for customer and will eventually be reviewed. They may have opened it, thought "that sounds reasonable" and then gotten distracted by real life. In their mind they are moving forward, and a quick call from me to see what they think will result in a hurried "Oh it's great - I thought you were already started!"

So how long do we wait for him/her to call?

If you haven't put a date for a response in your proposal (offer good for 2 weeks or until July 13, etc.) then give them a week and then pick up the phone.

In the meantime, keep busy looking for new opportunities to craft a proposal.

How long do you wait? Do you ever call or do you take silence as a no?

Deborah Chaddock Brown
Writer