Leading H.E.R. Way Podcast
What if I told you that building a successful business doesn’t have to mean running yourself into the ground?
Welcome to Leading HER Way, the podcast that challenges the outdated belief that success has to come with burnout.
I’m Nikisha, your disruptive coach, and after 15 years of growing multiple businesses, I’ve learned that working harder isn’t the answer—building smarter is.
Every week, I sit down with powerhouse women entrepreneurs and wedding pros who’ve cracked the code to scaling their businesses while reclaiming their time.
You’ll hear raw, unfiltered conversations, client transformations, and behind-the-scenes success stories proving that your business can thrive without you constantly putting out fires.
Here’s what you’ll take away:
✔️ How to build 7-figure systems that scale—so you’re not stuck in the weeds of your business.
✔️ How to stop being the bottleneck and design a business that runs smoothly without you.
✔️ Social proof from industry leaders who have mastered this shift—and are here to show you how.
So, if you’re ready to work less while earning more, hit play, and let’s create a business that ignites your freedom. 🔥
Leading H.E.R. Way Podcast
74: Why Clients Ghost You (And How to Fix It With a Clearer Sales Process)
You followed up.
You sent the brochure.
And still... silence.
If you've ever had a promising lead ghost you out of nowhere, this episode of Leading Her Way is for you.
Nikisha King breaks down the three biggest reasons why leads disappear—and (good news!) how to fix them.
Spoiler alert: it’s not your price. It’s not the economy. It’s your client journey.
Inside this episode:
- Why ghosting is a sign of confusion—not rejection
- How to pre-educate leads before the call to increase conversions
- Simple tweaks to your inquiry flow, email tone, and response structure
- The one mindset shift that transforms silence into sales
If you’re ready to turn ghosted leads into booked clients, this episode will give you actionable clarity to improve your sales process and confidently guide people from inquiry to YES.
Want more personalized support? Join the next More Profit, Less Chaos Masterclass and learn the 5-Star SCALE™ System.
Want to attract aligned clients with less hustle and more heart?
Follow @nkbizguru on Instagram and get access to Nikisha’s 5-Star SCALE™ Framework at her More Profit, Less Chaos masterclass.
Welcome to Leading Her Way with your host and business guru, Nakesha King. This podcast is the ultimate destination for women, creative entrepreneurs, who want to break free from burnout. If you are overwhelmed by client demands and feel like you're doing this all alone, you, my friend, are in the right place alone. You, my friend, are in the right place Now. Let's dive in for steps to take back your time and simplify your workflow. All right, Nikisha, take it away.
Nikisha King:Hello, gorgeous, Welcome back to Leading Her Way podcast, the podcast for women, creative business owners who are ready to build their business without burning out. I am so happy to be here with you, and today's topic is what we're going to talk about is if you ever had a lead reach out to you. They inquired on DM, email, through your forum, and then you respond and all of a sudden, poof they disappear. They're gone. You have no idea where they left to. What's going on? What did you do wrong? And normally when this happens, we always go to the pricing Our price is too much because maybe you sent a brochure, Maybe you sent something with pricing information. Or we go back to they're not interested because I did something wrong or my brochure was too much.
Nikisha King:All of the thoughts you have become about you and that silence is something we all dread. But, most importantly, what's happening? We all dread, but, most importantly, what's happening isn't about you personally, but what is it in your client journey process that might be creating this? So that's what I want to speak to you about. So let's get this clear when a client or a lead ghosts you, it's not about your price, it's not about the economy and it's definitely not always them not being ready, but most of the time it's about their journey, the process, the way that we respond. So I'm telling you this from my past experience. I remember when I would get leads coming in and they'll come through my contact form, my DM, you know someone might refer them and when they come in, there would be something that I would do, the way I would respond to them. I literally might be jumping into bed with them too quick.
Nikisha King:You ever thought about dating and how dating is a process. It's like the first thing we do is we go out, or, before we even go out, I'm going to ask you a question. So right now, if you're using an app for dating, the DM conversation is what really has to happen before I even consider going in public or with someone because I don't know who they are. It's the same thing. So we don't send a response or a DM going, let's get a date on the calendar. We might do a response asking them a little bit about who they are, what brings them joy, do they have any pets? Do they have any kids? Do they have all the things that we want to know if they're really a good fit? And it's the same process with lead but, like I was saying in the past, when I used to do inquiries, there was a common thread of what I was being taught to do. I was being taught to respond with either a brochure with pricing information, because we assume everyone comes asking us about a price so we should do a pricing brochure, and then when they ghost us, we automatically connect it to our price and, trust me, it's never the pricing we think it is, because in our heads we believe our price is too much. That's a whole nother conversation we're going to get to, but it's never your price. Then I would maybe send a get a like, get on a call.
Nikisha King:But sometimes people want to be warmed up and it depends on who your ideal client is. If you know your ideal client is someone who wants to get on a call, great. If you know some people who might come to you who are your second and third ideal client, you're kind of we have more than one. But if they come in there might be a little bit curious, want to know more, how can we speak to them? Instead of saying let's get on a call, right? We want to start to look at these elements that we think are really working in our favor, but the results are. They're not, Because when we do it, we see that our response is someone ghosting us or it's a low turnout. This is so important to look at the stats, If I respond this person and how I respond. I did this. So maybe this doesn't work. We always going to test it.
Nikisha King:But here's the thing when I zoomed in, I realized it had nothing to do with my pricing. It had nothing to do with a recession or tariffs or even my whole getting back to you. It was just about there was no clear structure. There was no clear journey for this lead to step into. There was no warmup. There's possibly no pre-education, for you know I'm talking about you, but for me there wasn't no pre-education. I didn't have that and it was just crickets. It was just this disappearing act that would frustrate me so much.
Nikisha King:But once I started to realize this, I was working with my coach and I started to realize I had no clear client process. I knew that I was onto something and I needed to start learning how to map out the actual journey I wanted my clients to experience. I wanted to map out a way that I would get them ready to engage with me. And once I mapped that out, everything changed and that is what I'm going to be sharing with you today. I'm going to be sharing three biggest reasons why clients ghost us and what we can do to fix it. Do you hear me what we can do, what's in our control to fix it? Not what someone else, not what the market's going to do, nothing of that nature. We are going to take control of the things we personally can control and, as a business owner, you get to control your client's journey. No one else gets to control that the market, your prices. I promise you these external things are not about you personally.
Nikisha King:So first, what's happening? So you have a potential client who found you online and they love. They loved what they saw, but they couldn't figure out what's next. You ever had those moments where people just don't know they love you. What's the action to take? So they DM you Okay, and when they DM you or they email you, how can we tell them what to expect? How can we start telling people how to expect us to work with them? What will happen next? How do we get them ready? We could do it through social media. We could do it to a response automated response but how do we create that? We want to be able to add what to expect. Can you imagine having a social media post that's pinned to the top that says what to expect when you inquire, or what to expect when working with me?
Nikisha King:This section can be something that literally breaks down your process in three to five steps. That's using simple language, nothing too heavy, right? What to expect? The first step is I might ask you a question to understand where you are in your journey. Your second step if you feel like this is a possible fit, we will get on a call so we can learn more about each other. Third step on that call, you're going to make a decision. You're going to be like you know what. This is really something I want to do. Or you might say I'm not ready to move forward because this is not number one on my value, but what I would love to do is stay in contact or join your middle list or something where they can keep in touch with you. Get that. This is what you want to be.
Nikisha King:Setting up, Bonus use visuals, icons, things to make it really simple, really easy what to expect when working with me. And what does this do? It will build clarity, and clarity creates buy-in. When people understand exactly what's about to happen, they don't have to guess, they don't have to figure it happen. They don't have to guess, they don't have to figure it out, they don't have to wonder. And people don't ghost when they know what's coming. Isn't that so good? All right, let's talk about reason two.
Nikisha King:You're asking them to commit too early. Think about it. You go out on a date with someone and they're like would you like to get married? And you have no clue who they are. You're not committing, you are running as far away as possible. I would I'm going to be really honest. I would be so scared I would be running. So sometimes, if your first email is about booking a call or ready to get started, just slow it down a little bit, right?
Nikisha King:Clients want to explore and ask questions, so we should explore and ask questions too before we get in a relationship with them. So what we want to do is add a middle step and maybe it's a little bit of a link to a page that shows your three steps of what will happen. What's next? Maybe it's a fun quiz to get to know where they are in their journey. And these are the things you might want to do.
Nikisha King:And my favorite one that I love is share a video walkthrough of your service. Not a 10 minute video, please, but like a one minute video, right, Show up, smile and go. Hi, how are you? Thank you for inquiring. I would love to learn a little bit more about you, so let me ask you this one question. You could do that. You could do a video going hey, you inquired. I am so interested in learning more about what you would like. Let me share with you what happens after you inquire. I may ask you a question to see where you are in your process and if you feel like you know what we want to have a further conversation. I'll send you a link to my calendar and finally, on that call, we could decipher if we want to work with one another. If we do, we'll say yes and talk about the next step. If not, what I would love to do is add you to an area where we talk to you and email you. If you're open to that, Is that okay? Okay with you. This is a really good way to start warming people up. It shifts you from chasing a sale to building trust, and trust leads to dialogue. Trust is everything. We don't believe we can get trust in the beginning of a call, but you can, and this is some of the ways that you can.
Nikisha King:Reason three you sound like everyone else. Omg, If you sound like everyone else, how can they tell the difference? Right, your email might sound too scripted, it might sound too businessy and if they feel like they're getting a bot and not a real person, they're going to ghost you. Now I always tell people automation is amazing, but automation doesn't mean cold and businessy, it means personal. You know your tone. If you don't know your tone, you have tools today that will help you find your tone. And, in having that, use it in that first email.
Nikisha King:Right, Personalize your inquiry responses. Mention something from their message. Use their name. How does automation work? When I teach my clients, we use their name. We use elements, but elements in regards to asking questions, elements to personalize it. I do this because I don't want my clients getting stuck in responding to inquiries and if they're working and they're doing so much, they don't have time. So we set up automation, but we can pull their name in our write-up. We can pull other things in our write-up, not just for hello their name. We can speak to them in a certain way that makes it feel like we're connecting with them, and I teach my clients that. So this is something I want you to also do. The other part is you can add a short video, like when you're doing a DM. Do a video of you right, Saying hi, how are you Calling their name makes a big difference. We want to do this because we want people to buy from us as people.
Nikisha King:People love the actuality now that they have a short distance between the owner and them. They want to get to know you, because if they're really going to work with you, why would they want to know this automated or this not automated, but this robot automation? They want to get to know you. So make sure your personality shows up in the things that you're doing. Be present. Present doesn't mean you don't have energy and all the energy, feelings and the boundary feelings. Listen, people want to work with people and that is who you are. That is who I am. I love working with people. Oh my God. People make me ecstatic, like so happy. Here's the truth.
Nikisha King:Getting ghosted isn't always a sign that you're doing something wrong, but it is a sign that something in your client journey is either unclear, rushed or missing some form of connection, and that is what we want to work with. And the really, really, really good news is all of those things are fixable. You can fix those with easy things that you put in place and we look at it to see if it's working. That's what I love about it. So I'm going to offer you something.
Nikisha King:I'm going to offer you two things. If you're ready to audit your client journey in the show notes, you can definitely download my audit, your client journey checklist. We want to help you figure out how to stop wondering why people are ghosting you and put things in place to test it. You can also head to my website at wwwnakishakingcom to download this audit, or you could definitely download it in show notes. I will walk you through every step from your inquiry process and spot exactly what things might be feeling or not working for you.
Nikisha King:Or, better yet, join me at my more profit, less chaos masterclass that's coming up and I'm going to teach you my entire five-star skill system, and the first one that tells you about ghosting is our signature client experience. The framework we built here will teach you how to implement all of these little things here and there to build a client journey that sells before the sales call. If you don't need to hustle harder, you don't need to hustle harder, but you can definitely work smarter and that is what we teach you in the more profit, less chaos masterclass. So I'll see you next week and remember your business isn't meant to run you ragged. That is not why you started this entrepreneur journey, this business. You are building it to rise as the iconic woman CEO you're meant to be. See you next week.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us today on Leading Her Way. We loved having you with us. Remember each action you take, no matter how small, adds up to big results. If today's episode fired you up, hit subscribe for more insights and visit our resource hub, which is linked to the show notes. There you'll find tools to streamline, organize and grow your business. Keep moving forward and we'll be right here to cheer you on next week.
