About 10 years ago I wrote a article noting that in the real estate and business worlds, people seemed to be moving away from cold calls. Instead, phone calls were often subject to elaborate planning and preparation, all via email. It may take two people 20 emails to agree on the need for a phone call, the agenda for the call, the right time to call it, and who would actually initiate the call. ‘call. Then, when the important time scheduled for the phone call came, it often didn’t work because something else happened. In my article, I suggested that it might make sense to pretend it’s 1974 and just pick up the phone and call someone.
The world did not follow my suggestion. Instead, in the years since, email has steadily grown in importance. Today, phone calls are less common than ever and more of an organizational issue. I am receiving more and more emails asking for permission to have a telephone conversation.
When I receive these emails, I usually don’t respond by initiating the phone call scheduling process. Instead, in many cases I simply call the person immediately, and usually successfully. In other cases, I might say, “Of course. Call when it suits you. If it’s not a good time, I’ll call you back. In the latter cases, usually after one or two calls, we manage to connect and have our conversation. Overall, it’s a lot less work than exchanging multiple emails to schedule a phone conversation.
In recognition of my losing battle, I updated my email signature block by adding this statement next to my phone number: “(no need to email first).” A minority of people responded to the invitation. Overall, email arrangements to schedule phone calls are even more frequent, time-consuming, and complex than ever.
It occurred to me that spontaneous, unorganized phone calls might now be considered rude. Maybe I’m the outlier and should just follow the program. A recent law school graduate said that when he started his first job, the first thing his supervisor told him was that he should never call anyone without first arranging it by e-mail. I was not that supervisor. I am not ready to accept this program. I have, however, started responding to some phone call proposals by also offering the proposer the opportunity to schedule a call if they wish. I’m in a service business, after all. I don’t want my customers to feel unwanted.
In recent years, it has become almost impossible to get anyone to engage in a telephone conversation. Every time I recommend a quick phone call, spontaneous or otherwise, to resolve a negotiation problem, people increasingly seem to think I’m just weird. They are completely unaware that in complex real estate negotiations, one phone call can easily replace 20 emails, all with less risk of misunderstanding. A phone call can also save you the time and effort of writing a series of carefully nuanced emails to present issues and argue positions.
Sometimes people I speak with lament the fact that they sent a few emails to someone with no response. Should they send another email? Did their emails go to a spam folder? Did they offend the recipient in any way? Were they using the wrong email address? Has the person left the company or changed their email address? What should the sender of the email do?
In response to all these email concerns, I often suggest picking up the phone and calling anyone who isn’t responding to emails. In most cases, I eventually manage to convince those who are wringing their hands that I have the right strategy – something completely counter-intuitive that they had never thought for a single second. This usually ends up working and it doesn’t take very long.
Unfortunately, I now realize that I have completely lost this battle. The final blow came when I saw that a service provider included their phone number in their electronic signature block, but also advertised: “Telephone calls by appointment only.” This may now be the wave of the future. But I always pick up the phone and make a phone call when I want to have a conversation with someone.