How sad that it’s become common practice to start emails without a proper salutation and to end it with a trailing history of forwards and spam text. (Clean up your forwarded email, man!) That, I can accept just for knowing that we are all in a hurry and it’s so easy to hit reply and shoot out some answer especially if it’s been an ongoing conversation. So now that we agree that email is easy, we can also label non-reply as quite rude, downright lazy, and extremely bad business.
In this time of poor economy and sluggish business, I’ve been sending off a lot of estimates via pdfs of spreadsheets with formal proposals. I get it—everyone is looking for a deal and bids are a great way of finding that. Often I’ve been asked to rush the proposals along and jump through hoops. Then… I hear the sound of crickets. It’s like dating again. How long should I wait before I can call and not make it sound like I’m so desperate? Everyone is busy and “it’s not your life”; time passes so quickly when it’s not yours. When is it alright to bother them to see if I’ve gotten the job and to give them enough time to check out my security clearance or business practices?
How about 9 times out of 10, I don’t hear anything—not a phone call, not a letter, and not even an email. I don’t require a Jane Austin Sense and Sensibility reply letter; just the common courtesy of a Thanks, but no thanks email. That way I can let that extra freelancer go that I’ve been holding onto just in case, or take that 2-day weekend that’s been so badly needed. Self-centered and rude people are unaware of the harm they are doing to themselves and their business.
“Whoa!”, you say, “That’s pretty harsh. Everyone is self-centered and rude at times. It doesn’t make you a bad person. I’m just stating a fact about non-reply as bad business. Don’t believe in kharma? Well, believe people will remember your actions or non-actions. Every time you put forth negative energy and disrespect toward another person’s time, it does erode business relationships and lesson your opportunities. You’ll probably be unaware at the time, but it’ll be measurable down the road.
Recently I went to a client’s showroom to look into doing his website. Soon after I left the location I received a voicemail—from him, the client. He thanked me for coming by; left me words of encouragement on my business; reassured me that he would do everything he could to make our partnership easier. I left the message on my voicemail for a few days as if to make sure it was real. I listened to it over and over like a sixteen year old. A client leaving a message, a nice message, thanking me!
“Pleases”, “Thank yous”, “Dear so-and-sos”, “Best regards”… where have they all gone? How about even picking up the phone and talking with real voices and intonations? Next time you do reply email, take a second to clean it up, remove all those SCREAMING CAPS, ask them how they’re doing, sign your name at the end, and proofread it before sending it off.
October 7th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Good advise. Thanks.
November 4th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Its amazing how little people notice these days, I swear, every time I open up an e-mail, I’m bombarded with several paragraphs of who else it was sent to, when I finally reach the actual mail, its chain mail. Please people! If you’re really going to send chain mail, clean it out a bit!! How hard it it?? Click, drag, highlight, delete. Wow, that took seconds that you could have spent picking your nose. O.o