Friday, October 28, 2016

Time to make a call?

I recently got a phone call from an old colleague. In the course of our conversation, he made the statement, “Every sale begins with a phone call.”

Now in my world of NLP, this would make sense that he would say this, because he is what we call an Auditory…his preferred mode of communication and thinking is vocal…auditory, sound, words.

But then I started thinking. One challenge of getting new business or securing a referral is to be able to DIFFERENTIATE yourself. You want to get someone to see you as different. And maybe this guy was on to something.

How many emails do you get a day?

How many calls…not telemarketing calls, but calls from someone to talk…do you get a day?

I think the ratio has tipped enormously in the past five years, especially now that we all have smart phones and can compulsively check constantly. Many of us probably get at least 100 emails a day. But I don’t get many calls.

Maybe a phone call to someone has become a differentiator!

I hate making calls. I am NOT auditory and I am a very fast typist. I like to write emails and I like that I can choose the time when I do it.

But the key to business communication is NOT to do what I like, but to do what makes a difference to someone else.

SO…for the next month, I am going to start making phone calls. I am going to respond to inquiries and referrals with a phone call. I am going to call old clients instead of sending them emails or newsletters. When I meet someone at a networking event, I am going to call them, not send an email. I want to see if it makes a difference.

Remind me to tell you what happens. And maybe you’d like to conduct the same experiment. If you do, CALL ME and tell me about it.