Why prospects’ contact details are now disclosed at the time of your meeting

Our mission at Sortlist is to build great business stories between providers and companies.

Many steps are necessary to fulfill that mission. The most important of all being to set up a meeting between both parties. We want to make sure that once you apply to an opportunity and book a meeting with a prospect, they do show up to discuss their project and consider your services.

That’s what we call client responsiveness, which we want to drastically improve.

We believe that not revealing a prospect’s contact information until the meeting you booked will help in doing so.*

(*Note that this is an experiment, and not all projects are affected by this change yet).

Until this change, prospects shared with us that using Sortlist could be an overwhelming experience.

They would post a project, we would send that project to you, and 4 providers would apply to it. The same 4 providers would then get access to the contact details and call the prospect.

The prospect then receives 4 phone calls in the same day, potentially more if he doesn’t answer right away, as well as multiple emails from providers, but also from Sortlist letting him know providers are interested in his project.

This kind of practice doesn’t follow the preferences set by the prospects, on how and when they want to be contacted.

To use a metaphor, when you put an apartment on sale or up for rent, you specify a time dedicated to visits. What you don't want is people to start calling you and ring at your door at any hour of the day.

We believe that disclosing prospects’ contact details at the time of your scheduled appointment will improve their experience. Ultimately, this should result in more responsiveness from them, which will make them more likely to respond and consider working with you.

As of now, providers will get access to prospects’ contact details at the time of the meeting they planned.

You will keep receiving opportunities as usual, and the application process remains the same:

Once you complete that process, all you need to do is prepare for your meeting and wait for it to happen. No need to try to contact the prospect upfront or send them an email, Sortlist is taking care of introducing you and bringing the prospect to you.

Furthermore, once you’ve applied, you will know exactly at what stage you currently are.

Indeed, we display an activity feed at the top of your opportunity, to help you keep track of your progress:

Of course, you will be notified if your application has been approved. You’ll therefore have a confirmation of how and when you’ll meet with the prospect.

Furthermore, once the prospect has accepted your application, the chat feature will be turned on, allowing you to ask preliminary questions in order to prepare the meeting upfront. That way, even if you don’t have access to the contact details of a prospect, you’ll still be able to communicate through Sortlist to ask for extra information.

You’ll be notified by email everytime a new message arrives in the chat.

Once you apply to an opportunity, multiple communications are sent to the project holder.

First and foremost, we let him know you applied by email and SMS, and ask him to review your application:

The prospect can then review your introduction, as well as your agency’s profile:

If the prospect is interested in your application, he can continue the process and confirm the meeting you booked. Once the meeting is confirmed, the prospect receives an email with all the important information, necessary to assist it:

Finally, 24h prior to the meeting, we send the prospect a reminder.

We take care of all those steps to help you gain time, in order to focus on your current clients but also on future applications.

If the prospect doesn’t show up to the meeting, despite our communications and reminders, two scenarios can happen.

At that point, you will have gained access to the contact details, giving you the option to call them and see if they are planning to join the meeting.

You’ll be able to show the contact details by clicking on the button in the upper right corner of your screen:

If you still can’t meet with the prospect, just let us know and you will receive a complete refund of the opportunity’s price. Indeed, the same refund rules as before continue to be applied.

Read our refund policy to learn more.

Any questions? Don’t hesitate to contact us via the chat, we’d be happy to discuss them with you!