Think of the last time you had a cancelled appointment. Was it because you sent an email to confirm? If you did, chances are, your customer hit the "reply" button, told you he/she was way too swamped with a deadline to meet, and canceled the appointment. Who's fault was THAT?

If you took responsibility, congratulate yourself! Using email is probably the absolute WORST way to confirm an outside appointment. Internally, it's OK, after all, these other guys down the hall HAVE to work with us, right? Perhaps.

 

So how addicted to your email are you, anyway? According to salary.com, there were 30.2 billion email messages sent in North America, up from 3 billion in 1998. The average worked spends two hours of email daily. And if you are one of the unfortunate few who spend more than half your day using email, you are one of 10% of the workers out there.

 

As a professional salesperson, you must use email to survive. I do, too. Email doesn't allow you to build relationships through bantor, humor, and friendly sarcasm like the telephone does. After all, you have the power of your voice to reflect ideas, share a laugh, and deepen your contact with customers. According to Nancy Flynn, author of a new book, "Email Management: 50 Tips for Keeping Your Inbox Under Control", "Email is a cold medium. There's no body language. No intonation. No facial expression. It's tough to network soldey through email."

 

Consider using the telephone more effectively. Need to confirm an appointment? Leave a message on voice mail (avoiding leaving your phone number--you don't want to be TOO accessible.) Use an upbeat voice mail message with a comment such as, "I am really looking forward to seeing you to discuss X", and your chance of seeing the customer increases.

 

Need to introduce yourself to a new prospect? Pick up the phone again. Leave multiple messages, if you have to. Your voice can work wonders in generating interest with a potential customer because you have the opportunity to be creative in your messaging. Leave a variety of different messages so that the customer hears that you have something new everytime you call.

 

Just the other day, I made a dozen or so outbound calls. In each instance, I said, "Call me back so I can ask you a quick question." By the end of the following day, all but two people had called me back! Those are pretty good odds, especially since I closed a new account over the phone, set up several face-to-face appointments, and secured three telephone follow up appointments.

 

Try this technique and let me know how it works for you. My email address is.......on second thought, the phone number is: 678 587-9911. Call me!

(c)Renee P. Walkup, SalesPEAK, www.salespeak.com 678 587-9911