Every Tuesday, sales expert Andy Bounds shares his top tips to improve your sales and communications. This week’s is…
A simple way to avoid a common mistake when texting
Communications watchdog Ofcom recently published research showing that texting is now more popular than calling. They found that 58% of people send texts every day, whereas only 46% make a phone call. In fact, the average person sends 50 texts per week.
This is quite interesting in itself, but I guess not surprising. BBC News 24 interviewed me, asking for my views on this, and my response centred on this one point:
Texts are brilliant if they should be texts (“Train’s a bit late. I’ll be there in 10 minutes”); but poor if they shouldn’t be (“I’m sorry, it’s not working. I don’t want to be your boyfriend any more. It’s not you, it’s me”)
So, a good question to ask yourself: “Do you always use the right communication channel?” For instance…
Conference calls where one person speaks and everybody else listens would often be better as:-
• A recorded conference call, so people can dial in when their diary allows, or
• An email containing most of the information, which is then discussed on a shorter call, or
• One big email, with no call
Face-to-face updates that drag on and on could instead be:-
• Everyone emails each other, bullet pointing the key 3-4 things others need to know
• Keep the face-to-face element, but make it half as long
• Stop having one every week (this is often a scary thought for some, but it’s worth checking: ‘what harm would it do if we had these every two weeks instead?’
If your team has delivered some amazing work, emailing them how grateful you are is better than doing nothing. But could you also/instead:-
• Speak to them in person
• Walk the floor (very powerful if you don’t usually do this) and thank them personally
• Host a short conference call so they can hear you say it
When an email is taking you ages to write, pick up the phone
A final point about texts: people often use their smartphones to both text and email, but use text language for both – ‘have a gd wkend’, ‘thx’ etc. Some recipients won’t want to receive emails like this so, if in doubt, play safe and use ‘proper’ English when emailing…
C U L8R
Action point
Think of the communications you deliver each week. Are you using the channel that’s best, or the one that you’ve always used?
Which one(s) could you change, to make these communications more impactful?
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Andy Bounds
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