Here’s Your Wake Up Call

Allan R. Goldner

I wish to apologize in advance, Las Vegas entrepreneurs, because it’s about to get ugly.  It’s time for a dressing down.  I am not happy and I’m calling you on the carpet.  Your behavior is out of control and cannot continue.  If it wasn’t so serious, the absurdity of the situation would actually be funny.  How does this happen? What are you thinking?
Wait, I’ve lost my temper

Can anyone explain to me the rationale behind not returning a phone call or email?  The customer or co-worker called, left you a message, and you’ve gotten the message and you didn’t respond?  Are you too busy? What are you, the President of the Free World?

Or, even more unimaginable, you agreed to make a call and don’t!   That’s right. You and I had a conversation and you assured me that you would make a call, but you never did.  Were you lying?  Did you forget or were you disingenuous? Perhaps, you rationalized that your agreement to make the call doesn’t necessarily mean within the time restraints of the current year?    Aaaaaahhhh!  You’re killing me.  Oh I understand. You’re simply waiting until you have all the details lined up.  Here’s a suggestion.  How about a call that says you just wanted to let them know that you’re working on the project, wouldn’t that be considerate?

All right, to be fair, it’s not just small businesses and individual entrepreneurs.  Larger outfits are just as guilty. Somewhere in their corporate culture, they have cultivated a subconscious message, that this behavior is OK.  People take their cue from the boss and the boss doesn’t really focus on the connection between considerate and effective communication and the perception of his business by his staff and customers.

Allow me to review what you’re supposed to do.  When anyone, who is working for you, with you, or financially supporting your business, emails you, you should immediately reply that you’ve received their message.  And I don’t mean auto-electronically.  When you’ve read their email message, you immediately reply and indicate an approximate time that you’ll make further contact.  What does it take to simply acknowledge the message, one click and 5 or 6 words?  But then, and most importantly, you actually follow up and respond as you said you would.  As far as I’m concerned, not responding is boorish and inconsiderate. Within this context, you completely demonstrate the value you place on the relationship.

I remember last century, when you called a business, and a human being would answer the phone and connect you or take a hand written message.  You would expect a return phone call from your party within the next day or so.  And, if you had to make a business call to someone’s home, (certainly not at meal times or weekends), and no one was home, you couldn’t leave a message. No answering machine for the average person.  You would simply have to try again. It could take several days or a week to speak directly with your counterpart.

Nowadays, we know that the party will certainly get our message. Should we expect that they will call us back to acknowledge our call?  Darn right. In fact, we are perplexed if we aren’t able to leave a voicemail.  Some glitch must have occurred.  And if you get the “voice mail full” message, you certainly get a picture of the service you can expect. 

The other side of the coin is when it comes to retrieving our messages. At least once a day the laziest among us will likely pick up their voice mail, and much more often for the real entrepreneurs that see each message as an opportunity to impress the staff and clients. How can we justify not returning the call within a day?  I’m sorry, but the “I don’t want to speak to that person” doesn’t excuse you. (Exception: Cold Calls, no etiquette required).  If we only talked to the people we liked or only did the tasks we enjoy, what fun we would have conducting our businesses.

Ready for the most outrageous scenario of all?  Your customer or potential customer has left you a voice mail or email, and you just haven’t gotten back to them.  They want to do business with you, but they’ll just have to wait until you get around to them. If this makes sense to you, you are business loser.

Thank you for reading this rant. I feel much better now. ;) For further discussion, call me. Leave me a message.