A buyer going quiet during a sale is surprisingly easy to miss. Usually there isn't a particular moment where it happens. You don't get an email saying they're having second thoughts, and they rarely stop responding altogether overnight. More often, someone who was replying within a few hours starts taking a day or two. They stop asking as many questions, you get voicemail more often when you call, and eventually you realise you haven't had a proper conversation with them for a couple of weeks.
Of course, that doesn't automatically mean there's a problem. People are busy, buyers go on holiday and sometimes there simply isn't much to talk about. But when someone's behaviour changes noticeably from how they were at the start of the sale, we've found it's usually worth paying attention to.
The difficulty is spotting that change early enough. If you're progressing one sale, you'd probably notice it immediately. If you're an agent with 30 or 40 sales going through alongside valuations, viewings, instructions and everything else happening in the branch, it's incredibly easy for the quiet files to look like the good files. Nothing has gone wrong, so they don't demand your attention.
What does a buyer going quiet actually look like?
It's less about how often somebody contacts you and more about whether their behaviour has changed.
A buyer who has only ever replied once a week probably isn't giving you any cause for concern by continuing to do exactly that. We'd be more interested in the buyer who was previously very engaged, replied the same day and regularly called with questions, but has suddenly stopped doing those things.
There are a few changes we'd particularly look out for:
- Replies gradually taking longer. Not one slow reply, but a noticeable change over a couple of weeks.
- Much shorter responses. Someone who previously wanted to discuss everything is suddenly replying with "okay, thanks".
- No more contact from them. They used to ring or email with questions and now every conversation is being initiated by you.
None of those means they're about to pull out, but they're enough to justify picking up the phone rather than sending another routine progress email.
The important thing is the change. Every buyer communicates differently, so there isn't much value in deciding that seven days without contact is always a problem. Seven days might be completely normal for one buyer and very unusual for another.
Why buyers start to disengage
There isn't one answer, but quite often something has happened that hasn't been properly talked through.
It could be something in the survey that's worried them, a legal enquiry they don't understand, searches taking much longer than they expected, or simply several weeks where they don't feel the sale has moved. Sometimes there genuinely is nothing wrong at all. Other times they've started looking at Rightmove again and another property has caught their eye.
We've found that the thing worrying a buyer isn't always particularly serious. They might receive an email from their solicitor mentioning a restrictive covenant, indemnity policy or missing certificate. To somebody dealing with property transactions every day, it may be completely routine. To the person spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on a property, it doesn't necessarily sound routine.
The same applies to delays. If searches were expected back within three weeks and it's now week five, there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation. The problem comes when nobody has given the buyer that explanation. From their point of view, they've spent two weeks wondering why nothing seems to be happening.
A quick conversation can make a huge difference in both situations.
Pick up the phone
If a previously engaged buyer has become noticeably quieter, we'd always favour a phone call over another email.
It doesn't need to be a dramatic conversation and there's no need to open by asking whether they're thinking about pulling out. You're simply checking in and giving them an opportunity to tell you if something is bothering them.
Something along these lines is normally enough:
"Hi [name], it's [you] from [agency]. I wanted to give you a quick call rather than send another email. We haven't properly caught up for a little while, so I just wanted to see how you're feeling about everything. Is there anything that's come up that we haven't talked through?"
Then give them a chance to answer properly.
The temptation is to immediately fill any silence by telling them everything is progressing well. That can defeat the point of making the call. If there is something worrying them, you want them to tell you what it is.
You might find they're perfectly happy and have simply been busy. Or you might hear that they're concerned about something in the survey, don't understand one of the enquiries, are frustrated by a delay or aren't feeling quite as certain about the property as they were a month ago.
Those are all much more useful things to know than "buyer chased, voicemail left".
Sometimes the problem isn't the problem
One of the things we see regularly in sales progression is uncertainty becoming a bigger issue than whatever originally caused it.
Searches taking longer than expected isn't necessarily concerning. Searches taking longer than expected when nobody has explained why can be.
Another round of enquiries isn't necessarily a problem either. But if a buyer doesn't understand that enquiries regularly happen in rounds, receiving another list of questions can make the transaction look as though it's going backwards.
This is where regular contact matters. It isn't about calling buyers every few days simply to tell them there's no update. It's about making sure they understand where things stand, what's currently happening and whether anything needs their attention.
A buyer who knows why they're waiting is in a very different position to a buyer who only knows that they're waiting.
When to ask the more direct question
There are occasions where the conversation makes it clear that something has changed.
The buyer might repeatedly say they're "thinking things through" without explaining what they're thinking about. They may avoid committing to the next step, become vague about timescales or mention concerns without wanting to discuss them.
At that point, we'd rather ask the question than spend another couple of weeks pretending everything is fine:
"It sounds like you're not quite as certain about the purchase as you were before. Is there something that's making you reconsider?"
The answer might not be the one anybody wants to hear, but knowing there's a problem gives you an opportunity to understand it and, where possible, help resolve it.
If they've already decided they no longer want to proceed, finding that out earlier is useful too. The seller and agent can make decisions based on what is actually happening rather than keeping a property tied up while everyone waits for a buyer who has mentally moved on.
Why this is so easy for agencies to miss
Knowing what to look for isn't really the difficult part. Remembering to look for it across every sale is.
An agent with a busy pipeline will naturally be drawn towards whichever files are making the most noise. A mortgage offer is expiring, a solicitor needs chasing, somebody wants to discuss completion dates, a survey has come back with a problem. Those files make themselves known.
A quiet buyer doesn't.
That's why a file can sit there looking perfectly healthy while the relationship with the buyer is gradually changing in the background.
At a small scale, you can keep most of this in your head. As the number of sales grows, it becomes much harder. You're trying to remember when each buyer was last contacted, whether they replied, how engaged they normally are and whether anything has changed.
This is exactly the sort of job we think software should be doing.
The system doesn't need to decide that a buyer is going to withdraw. In fact, we'd rather it didn't. It simply needs to notice that something has changed or that meaningful contact hasn't happened for a while, and put that file back in front of the person progressing it.
The person can then do the bit that actually requires a person: make the call, listen to the buyer and work out what's going on.
A quiet buyer isn't necessarily a problem. A buyer who has become noticeably quieter than they were before is worth checking in with. That's where we think the split between people and software should sit: the system keeps watch across every sale, while your team handles the conversations that actually need them.