Every business that sells something has them. The customer who is almost ready.

He isn't saying no. That would actually be easier. He's interested. He likes what you're offering. He asks good questions. You've spoken three times.

He's going to send the documents tonight. “We're almost there.” Tuesday comes. Nothing. You call Thursday. “Sorry, crazy week. I'll definitely send everything tonight.” Nothing. Then next Tuesday he calls you. “Okay, now we're ready.” Great. Except now something else is missing. And this can go on for weeks.

I've been doing business long enough to know that some of these people eventually become excellent customers. That's what makes the problem difficult. Maybe he really is busy. Maybe his accountant is slow. Maybe his wife isn't convinced yet. Maybe there's something about the transaction he doesn't understand and he's embarrassed to admit it. Maybe he's waiting for money to arrive. Sometimes one more phone call really does close the deal. But sometimes he is never going to buy anything.

Every business has tire kickers hanging around. Some are comparing alternatives. Some are thinking about buying six months from now. Some enjoy window shopping. And some, frankly, are just bored. They'll ask questions for an hour. They'll compare products. They'll ask what I would do in their situation. They'll come back next week and ask more questions. Given enough time, they'll become experts in my product without ever becoming customers.

Anyone who's sold anything knows how irritating that can become. I've actually seen people practically thrown out of business premises, pretty violently, because the owner finally decided they'd been window-shopping and wasting his time for too long.

I understand the frustration. But I don't think that's the answer. An outright “no” doesn't bother me much. Fine. Next. It's the almost-deal that gets under my skin. “I'll send everything tonight.” “We're definitely moving forward.” “Just waiting for one thing.” “Call me Monday.”

The problem is that I start mentally counting a deal that doesn't exist. Then Monday becomes Wednesday. Wednesday becomes next week. The customer resurfaces, my expectations go back up, and the whole thing starts again. And meanwhile I'm working. Calls. Emails. Looking at documents. Recalculating something. Answering the same question in a different way. Calling somebody else on his behalf.

Twenty minutes here. Fifteen minutes there. No single interaction seems expensive. Three months later I've spent six hours on somebody who's still “almost ready.” And then another trap appears. I've already spent six hours on this guy. I can't give up now.

Of course I can. That's six hours of sunk cost talking. If I'm not careful, the four hours I've already wasted become the reason I waste another four.

Sales advice tells us that the fortune is in the follow-up, and there's a lot of truth in that. Plenty of deals happen on the fifth, tenth or twentieth contact. But taken literally, that means nobody ever leaves my pipeline.

So I've started thinking that maybe I shouldn't measure interest. I should measure movement. A tire kicker can sound incredibly interested. A real customer may not sound excited at all. But something happens. The document arrives. The application gets completed. The deposit gets paid. The appraisal gets scheduled. The credit issue gets addressed. He does the thing he said he would do.

If we have three conversations and nothing has changed between them, maybe I'm not following up on a deal anymore. I'm maintaining a relationship with a possibility. And possibilities can occupy an astonishing amount of the working day.

The other thing I've had to learn is not to become disappointed with people because they don't buy from me. They don't owe me a deal because I spent time with them. Even if they wasted some of that time. My job is to decide how much more of it I'm willing to give them.

So maybe the trick with the customer who's always almost ready isn't to finally get angry and slam the door. Keep the door open. Just don't stand in the doorway waiting.

(How do you distinguish the customer who needs one more push from the customer who's going to be “almost ready” forever?)