Dealing with Unreturned Phone Calls
Last week my contact management software reminded me to call Lois. She is the logical point of contact at a firm where I would like to do business. I have known Lois for five years and her boss for six. Over those years I have made 25 calls to one or the other of them, and exactly five have been returned. The last time I spoke with Lois, she informed me that they were working with a competitor. That was almost three years ago. Since then all efforts to contact Lois and her boss by phone have gone into a void. A few e-mails lobbed in for variety have also received no response.
What should I do? What would you do?
The answer, of course, depends on the reason my calls have gone unreturned. A little voice inside me says that Lois and her boss want nothing to do with me. But I have learned through many years of experience that it is the voice of my own insecurities. More probably, they find us too expensive and are uncomfortable saying so. Or they realize that my calls are not urgent and treat them as such. Or they are just busy. Still, three years is a long time. Whatever the reason, I have little enthusiasm for making the call. Another little voice inside me says that this is a waste of time, that nothing will ever come of calling these people. Once again, experience responds, cautioning me that one more call will cost me little, to which the first little voice says that a time comes to give up and refocus one’s energies elsewhere.
My deliberations were interrupted, and I put off deciding what to do.
This is a true story about a client I have been pursuing, except Lois’s name came up on my tickler file a couple of months ago, not last week. I did call and this time Lois called me back to invite me to pitch on some work. There was only one competitor and our chances of winning were good. Today she called to give us the go ahead.
I have many such stories after 30 years of business development. Over the years I have learned that an unreturned phone call means that someone did not return my call and little more. Others reinforce this belief. Christy Williams, a friend of mine, ran into a contact she had been trying to reach for months, leaving many messages. All her calls went unreturned. When she met the man at a conference, he greeted her enthusiastically saying that he had recently referred her to a prospective client. She thanked him and said, “Let’s stay in touch.” “What do you mean?” he responded, “We’ve been in touch.” He equated her unreturned phone calls with their being in touch.
A big part of rain making is persistence. Still, several times a week a name comes up on my tickler system of someone who has not responded to previous calls. And still, after all these years, the little voice inside me says to give up, that it is not worth the effort, that the person doesn’t like me and doesn’t want to talk with me. It is by learning to override that voice that I have become successful.
April 4th, 2007 at 9:33 PM
Ford, welcome to the blogosphere! It is good to have your voice–and your experience, and lessons.
One thing I like about this posting is the powerful reminder that we are never quite as much at the center of everyone else’s universe as we might think we are.
We’re generally not as good as we think we are, nor as bad as we think we are. What we can be sure of is that others just don’t think of us at all as much as we think they do! And as you point out, there is freedom in that. Freedom to just pick up the phone and dial and find out the truth, whatever it may be.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:58 AM
I have reflected on why I (like most people) think that other people think about me more than they do. Why should that be? Becaue I think about myself quite often, and so assume others do, too. And why do I think about myself so much? Probably because I spend so much time with myself. I am with myself practically every day, so of course I am led to think about me. Clients, who spend much less time with me naturally think of me less often. Am I on to something here, Charlie?
April 5th, 2007 at 10:56 AM
Great blogposts so far, Ford! We’ll all look forward to more.
I think you’re onto something very important here.
January 19th, 2009 at 8:19 AM
[...] In earlier posts (Dealing with Unreturned Phone Calls, A Lesson from Joe) I described how easy it is to misinterpret a lack of response from a prospective client. This is but one example of a broader tendency for rainmakers to see things differently from the rest of us. Here are two more examples: [...]
January 20th, 2009 at 2:58 PM
This series of blogs reminds me of an experience with a large client. It was when I was working for a large consultancy. One of the senior partners on an account (arguably a rainmaker) seemed to be making a pain out of herself at a very large client. I asked a very senior and seasoned partner why the client would let this happen, and he reminded me that we are a means to an end. Some of the noise in the middle is to be expected. We sometimes call clients friends when I think we are merely friendly. As such, when they don’t call us back, it is because they don’t need anything from us at the time. Not that they don’t like us, respect us, or want us to help them do what they need to get done. It’s like when your personal shopper calls to tell you that your favorite designer has a new line out. If you don’t need anything, you don’t call her back just to say thanks for the call.
January 20th, 2009 at 4:27 PM
Anne
Well put, though it takes a while for most of us to learn this. It is imporntant that remind out cleints that we are still alive and interested in working with them, and sometime, even to remind them of what we do. Your personal shopper obviously does this for you, and I suspect that you appreciate the attention, even when you don’t return her calls. And, from the sound of it, I bet you do the same for your clients.
Ford Harding
January 29th, 2009 at 11:47 AM
I couldn’t agree more concerning persistence in making contact even when the customer doesn’t return calls or emails. Sometimes the combination of being busy and being unable to connect your product/service with their current needs translates into a lack of urgency in responding. But, they’ll remember you when they do need you.
I was on the other side of this situation — I’ve an open door policy and vendors had the ability to drop in unannounced. I’d give them a few minutes but not much more than that. This one vendor called on me every month for a year, in person, and I kept saying that there were no needs for his product — I was very satisfied with his competitor.
Until the day that I had an emergency and my regular supplier couldn’t deliver. I gave the other vendor a call with a challenge — help me out and you’ll win a substantial percent of my business for this product. He did, so I did.
Persistence kept him “top of mind”. His readiness to think creatively and deliver won him the business.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:54 PM
Tom
Good story! Thanks for reinforcing the point.
Ford Harding