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Ghostbusters – three ways to bring prospects back to life

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October 16, 2025

You’ve had a fantastic first meeting with a prospect. You gave them some great ideas and they gave you all the right signs – nodding as you spoke and agreeing that the fit was really strong. Then when you go to follow up the meeting, they just don’t respond.

We’ve all been there. It can be incredibly disheartening when a prospect goes cold on you. But we’re here with three key tips to bust those ghosts and get you the partnerships you and your cause deserve.

Know that “no answer” doesn’t mean no

Sumatran Orangutan Society had a great first meeting with a global engineering firm in January of 2021 with their Head of Climate Resilience. In this meeting, the prospect said they “saw how powerful this could be for the firm” - but after the meeting, stopped responding.

When a company doesn’t reply, it is very easy to take this as a sign that they are not interested. That “no answer” is code for “no”. But it doesn’t mean that – it simply means that they haven’t made their decision yet.

Knowing this, the SOS team followed up with patient persistence. In August, the firm came back and were able to book a meeting in within a week. The contact explained that their company had been going through significant structural changes, but that they’d been progressing the partnership internally. They thanked the SOS team for their patience, and communication has been far more consistent since.

This example shows us that it’s important to remember – we can’t read our prospects’ minds. If it is a no, they will tell us. So don’t count yourself out of the race – keep following up with patient persistence.

Break patterns

It is estimated that the average adult makes up to 35,000 decisions a day. Everything from what mug to use through to what show to watch on Netflix. With all of these micro-decisions to make, our brain chooses the path of least resistance.

This ‘path of least resistance’ includes repeating choices we’ve made previously. So if they’ve already chosen not to respond to your email once, they will see that and will be nudged towards not responding again.

Knowing this gives us a clear insight – you should always start a new email, rather than respond to yourself. This takes away that nudge. Treat each follow-up email as a fresh start. Try new subject lines and calls to action. If a few emails haven’t worked, try reaching out via WhatsApp or LinkedIn.

Activate the law of reciprocity

When Cats Protection realized that a number of their prospects weren’t responding during the second lockdown, they decided to change up their new business approach. Rather than following up for another meeting, they decided to take a generous approach. They emailed all of their prospective partners a link to their “Moggy Modules” – a tool developed by their community team to engage primary school children.

They sent the Moggy Modules out with a nice note saying that they understood lots of people were struggling with their children being at home all the time, and this was something that might help. That they had seen this resource and thought of the person.

The response was incredibly strong. The Cats Protection team had activated the law of reciprocity. This is the behavioral science law that states that when we are given something for free, it creates a deep psychological urge to give something back to that person. In this case, what the companies gave back to Cats Protection was a meeting to move the partnership forward.

This brings us to the question: what gift could you give your prospects? Maybe you have a great resource you could share, story you could tell or physical item you could post. It’s worth thinking about.

In summary, you want to make it as easy as possible for the prospect to come back to you.

By following up on a regular basis, you bring yourself back to their mind. By breaking patterns, you nudge their brain into seizing this opportunity to respond. By giving them a gift, you create a psychological need for them to respond. Using each of these tools will help you bring these prospects back to life – and ultimately, achieve your charity’s mission faster and with greater certainty.

If you enjoyed this blog, we recommend checking out our upcoming conference Corporate Partnerships Everywhere – particularly Dana Segal’s session on using behavioural science to nudge your partner into saying yes. You can check out the whole programme here.

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The Four Ways Charities Create Value For Businesses

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Charities help companies achieve the following goals:

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Employee Engagement and Retention

Corporate partnerships provide employees with opportunities to support causes that matter, strengthening morale and workplace culture.

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Competitive Differentiation

Working with charities helps businesses stand out and demonstrate purpose in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

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Sales Opportunities

Purpose-driven partnerships can strengthen customer relationships and attract new customers.

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Brand Trust and Credibility

Authentic partnerships help companies build stronger, more trusted brands.

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Right now, all four of these areas are top priorities for companies.

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Why Understanding Partnership Value Matters

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When charities understand how to measure and communicate their partnership value, something powerful happens.

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They gain the confidence to pitch bigger opportunities, create stronger proposals and negotiate partnerships based on the real value rather than guesswork.

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This shift allows charities to move beyond undervalued collaborations and instead build high-impact corporate partnerships that benefit both sides.

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Learn How To Calculate Your Partnership Value

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To help charities develop this confidence, Remarkable Partnerships have created a new service: Unlock Corporate Partnerships Value Workshop.

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This practical session is designed to help charities understand the value they can offer companies and apply a simple framework to calculate it.

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During the workshop, you will learn:

About the four types of partnership value.
Explore why understanding value helps secure higher-value corporate partnerships.
See examples from successful corporate charity partnerships.
Work through an interactive exercise calculating the value of a current partner or prospect.

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The session lasts 2 hours and 30 minutes and provides a practical method charities can continue using when developing future partnerships.

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If you’d like to learn more about the workshop, contact: jonathan@remarkablepartnerships.com

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Many charities undervalue their corporate partnerships, limiting both impact and opportunity. This article explores why, the real value charities bring to businesses, and how understanding it can unlock stronger partnerships, with a workshop for those looking to take it further.

Learn More

Latest News

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Build Partnerships That Smash Targets

We know that charities can build major corporate partnerships, even in these tough economic times. That’s why we held a webinar where three special guest speakers shared recommendations to build corporate partnerships that smash targets.

Their recommendations and insightful stories are described below.

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Stop Asking and Start Giving

Matt Turner MBE from Creative Pod recommends that charities stop asking and start giving. He said the best corporate partnerships are where every single person around the table wins. It’s about doing things differently, standing out a little bit and pushing the boundaries.

He shared a story about a hospice who provide free grief counselling to anyone in their local community. Matt worked with them to create a corporate product of grief counselling for companies to offer their employees. It’s £3.50 per employee, per month, and anytime your employee has a bereavement they are fast tracked to the front of the queue and receive 12 free sessions of grief counselling.

Another suggestion from Matt is if you have a corporate ball and you have two tables that you just cannot shift, stop wasting your time trying to sell them and give them away to two banks instead. You tell the banks to bring their richest friends and customers for a night out. Then you know you have two tables with some extremely wealthy people with whom you can build long-term partnerships.

Both examples demonstrate that when you stop asking and start giving it helps you build long-term corporate partnerships.

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Lead with insight, not instinct

Nina Saffuri from Raise Impact recommends you lead with insight, not instinct. She shared the following inspiring story which demonstrates her point.

When she was at War Child they got through to the final four of a major charity of the year, but they came second in the staff vote. They were really disappointed, because this wasn’t the first time they hadn’t won a staff vote. Nina asked her Head of Corporate Partnerships to look at the last two years and analyse how much time they had spent on losing, especially on charity of the year. They came back and said they were wasting one third of their time on losing.

Nina suggested they do a test and don’t apply for any charity of the year opportunities for one year. She encouraged her corporate partnerships team to be bold instead and turn their attention to something they were more likely to win. She asked them to find an industry that wasn’t so competitive and where there weren’t any staff votes. They came back and suggested the gaming industry. Nina and here colleagues weren’t gaming experts, so they spoke to a couple of their donors in the gaming industry. They asked them to share about the industry and make some introductions. They also recruited someone from the gaming industry.

They started with a “Games Jam” where they asked gaming companies to create games for War Child which they sold on a gaming platform. This activity only raised £10,000. However, during that week they engaged and built relationships with some of the major gaming companies in the UK. Now that industry raises £700k-£1million unrestricted income for War Child ever year.

The key message from Nina is find your valuable insight. Spend time understanding where you’re losing and see if you can build more partnerships with industries. In other words, lead with insight not instinct, because it transforms your focus, your partnerships and your results.

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Find the company’s pain

Peter Chiswick from Remarkable Partnerships shared the good news that this is a time of opportunity for charities to build major corporate partnerships, but only if they take the time to find a company’s pain and show how their partnership can solve it.

Peter demonstrated his recommendation by sharing an example from his corporate career where he worked for a company who provided data on patent software. One of their clients was a major engineering company.

Peter’s company were just one of 3,000 suppliers and they had a small relationship worth £2,000 a year. He secured a meeting with their Heads of Innovation and he knew this was his opportunity. Before the meeting he asked his internal colleagues to build a list of the latest releases of technology in the sector where the engineering company operated, and put it on one piece of paper.

When Peter went to the meeting the company spent the first 20 minutes telling him how everything was fantastic and they were ahead of the curve. Peter said you might want to have a look at this, and he dropped the piece of paper on the table. It showed they were six months late to market, whereas they thought they were miles ahead.

In that moment Peter and his company moved from one of many suppliers to a company adding massive value. He was helping solve their pain. More senior people came into the room to see the piece of paper, and that was the start of a very large contract with the engineering company.

You can apply the insight from this story to corporate-charity partnerships. Before you approach a company, take time to think what could be their commercial pain. Then when you meet with them you can describe how a partnership with your company will help solve that pain.

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Conclusion

These three experts show that successful corporate partnerships aren’t built on hope. They’re built on smart strategy, bold thinking and a genuine commitment to creating value for everyone involved. Whether it’s giving rather than asking, using insight to focus your time, or uncovering a company’s commercial pain, each approach helps charities stand out and build stronger, longer-lasting relationships. By putting these recommendations into practice, your charity can not only survive in this challenging climate but build partnerships that truly smash targets.

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