Start with Hello: How to Convert Today's Stranger into Tomorrow's Client

Chapter 11

Don’t forget the telephone

My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director.

Cole Porter

It’s so easy to simply email or text someone and have a conversation that way rather than picking up the phone and actually talking. By communicating using either of these mediums, we may be limiting the chances of experiencing serendipitous moments that may be hovering nearby and that we may not otherwise be aware of. By having a brief text conversation, or dropping someone a reply to their email, we could be missing out on opportunities. But, of course, it’s easier to reply to a message in either of these two mediums and then quickly move on, back to the main task at hand.

When you get an enquiry via email from a potential new client, what do you do? Do you answer it and then file it in your ‘new enquiry’ file and perhaps follow up the next week? Or do you pick up the telephone and call your potential new prospect and have a chat? I bet most people would go with the first option, particularly if the email from your new prospect is a simple price enquiry that you can deal with easily. After all, you get heaps of those enquiries don’t you? So why waste your time replying by telephone?

Only recently I picked up the telephone to respond to a new enquiry and the gentleman on the other end of the phone actually thanked me for taking the time and trouble to respond to his enquiry and said that it was refreshing, not to mention nice, to have had a personal response. To me, that ...