You have to understand your customers if you want to successfully serve them. One of my pet peeves is, people rarely pick up the phone anymore.

What’s up?

Richard Branson sums it up by saying:

The quality of business communications has become poorer in recent years as people avoid phone calls and face-to-face meetings, I can only assume, in some misguided quest for efficiency,[…] there is nothing efficient about allowing a small problem to escalate.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against email; it’s a brilliant tool to help reach out to people you wouldn’t ordinarily meet.

Just don’t depend on it entirely.

Go the extra mile

When you call a prospect you can hear them, you can ask another question to get to know them more, and build rapport faster. You’ll get a better understanding of their day-to-day struggles by simply asking, “what’s today’s priority?”.

You might be thinking, people don’t like being interrupted with a phone call anymore. That’s absolutely true, we don’t. However if the first question you ask is, “is this a good time to call?” or, a favourite of mine, “good time, bad time?” You give the other person full autonomy to carry on or say no.

Simple courtesy drops resistance and gives them autonomy. If they say no, ask when a convenient time to call back – 7 out of 10 times they’ll give you day and AM or PM answer. Then they’ll be expecting your call.

I dare you

Do it.

Stand out.

Pick up the phone.

I double dare you!

Your exercise today

Just once, instead of emailing a prospect or client, call them. Then come back and tell me what happened in the comments box, below.

Sales is a contest for people’s attention; get attention by paying attention