I was reminded at a seminar last weekend that when Diana and I started our business together (thirty years ago), our primary communication tool was the fixed wire telephone and having a telephone answering machine was so important. In those days mobile telephony was expensive (75p per minute and billed in whole minutes!). Thus, the aim was to use the telephone to make appointments to get in front of a prospect to present our opportunity.
Today, it seems to me, that most people seem to talk using their thumbs rather than their mouths using a language best described as QWERTYUIOP. This seems to work as appointments are made, but now the face to face meeting appears to be conducted through Skype or Facetime or Zoom. I’ve no challenge with this as the result seems to be similar in that we end up with new members and new partners, but I have a concern.
At last weekends seminar, I was asked why Diana and I had built a National Network Leader Distributorship so quickly within five years and eleven months? That was a great question and deserving of considered thought. It seems to me that the old-fashioned way (analogue) of communicating is faster than these latest (digital) methods of communication. It would appear to me that it’s quicker, easier and simpler to make contact, build rapport and get a result using our analogue methods or am I old-fashioned and prejudiced? I believe that people don’t join companies, they join people, and in my opinion, digital methods of prospecting and presenting are a tad impersonal and difficult to show that you really care about their future.
However, I’m not against them, and I can see a definite case when a contact that you wish to engage with lives at the other end of the country.
I’m not suggesting for one minute that we should all become Luddites and revert to the analogue way of doing things but I am suggesting that a blend of approaches dependent on location might be a better way.
Please feel free to comment and debate in the comment sections below and don’t forget to share my blog with your team and subscribe to it if you have not already done so.
Until my next post…..Toodle-oo!
Clive Leach's Blog 
I agree, the phone is my friend. I only see digital media as a good tool to initiate getting to talk to someone you may not have connected with otherwise. When just using digital media, a person can simply not reply to you when they choose to and the conversation ends, which doesn’t really tell you anything. There is the remote possibility they didn’t get or spot the last message among all the other digital stuff thrown at us, or they forgot to reply, or they lost their phone, or they misunderstood what you said…any one of many outcomes which are something other than “I don’t want to talk anymore”. On the phone with a real voice you either move the conversation on to the next step because they now feel comfortable with who you really are having spoken in real time or you can end the conversation mutually at a defined point with a defined outcome.
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Brilliantly well put!
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I think it’s important to have a blend of approaches & use social media to ask for a persons phone number if you don’t have it using the appropriate language. This gives what you’re proposing a higher level of importance by talking over the phone.
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It is amazing that in this world of high speed internet, banking etc that our communication takes milliseconds to deliver but 10 times longer to write where a call would be so much simpler!
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Spot on!
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Great idea. Following 😎
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Thanks. Feel free Richard to share with your team!
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