I love using emails and texts for business—and I’m not a 20-something. Texting is fast and efficient, and you can include visuals in a text if you want to quickly show a customer what you’re talking about. Emails is also a fast and efficient way to reach customers.
Both communication methods, however, can get you into trouble and cost you sales. Here are a few danger signals that you need to be aware of.
No response
I made a lunch appointment with a colleague. We had selected a date several weeks later, and for when I would be away from my office. I always confirm appointments to make sure the person is planning to meet with me so I don’t waste time traveling. In this case, I emailed my colleague the day before to confirm the meeting, but I didn’t hear back. At the time, I didn’t think it was a danger signal. It was.
I was surprised when I called the next day to confirm our meeting that my colleague had not received my earlier email. Despite our having emailed back and forth many times, this one time my confirmation email went to spam. I didn’t get a response because the email was never opened. I also had a lunch scheduled that didn’t happen.
It’s a warning sign when you send an email, expect a response, and don’t get one. If you know the typical response time of your colleagues and customers, you should immediately get on the phone and confirm appointments when that time expires.
When the words signal trouble
Let’s say you get an email from a customer asking for further details about some work you are proposing to do. You reply with the required information, and then your customer responds with an email that starts with the following: “Good grief!”
What would you do? Would you take the time to write an email back to explain what you meant? Or would you immediately get on the phone because you realize that you have an unhappy customer who is thinking that either you or your work is missing the mark?
I would agree with you if you did the latter. Women are more likely to use exclamation points in their written communication; in fact, some women use too many exclamation points, but that is a different conversation. In my example, that email was written by a male.
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Start to worry when you see an exclamation point in an email written by a man. You have an urgent situation on your hands with that exclamation point, unless there’s good news before it.
Get on the phone immediately when you realize that you have a customer with a problem. Don’t try to explain yourself in an email—an email explanation may end up making the reader more defensive. Email is not the best vehicle if you want clear communication.
When you forget to proofread
I once replied to a client who sent me an urgent request by text. He had asked me to review his slide deck for a very important customer meeting. This was an international client and his culture is a formal one. I intended to text back, “I will review your deck within the next hour.” Voice recognition software being what it is produced “deck” with a different vowel. Imagine my shock when I proofed the text. I quickly deleted that word and changed it to deck. I would have been mortified had that text been sent.
Email and texts are great for business. Just be sure you don’t lose any business because of them.
RELATED: Is Bad Writing Costing Your Company Valuable Time and Money?
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