How are YOUR communication skills standing up?

Just like in dancing – are you doing the Tango or the Mis-fango?

This is something to seriously consider! Earlier I wrote about people not responding to modern communication systems in my piece “Are you getting through?” where essentially it was revealed that most people are just not responding to your phone calls and emails etc.

Are you one of the guilty ones and what is this costing your business?

This is a sample of some of my attempts to communicate over the last couple of weeks.

I phoned a friend and associate to give him a red hot lead and got his answer machine, where I left a message to give me a call. I’m still waiting and the red hot lead has gone elsewhere.

Contacted a company with a question that when answered would in all probability result in a sale. Since I contacted them (coincidentally?) I have received two sales prospecting calls from them, (where I deliberately did not restate my question) but I am still waiting for someone to contact me with the answer to my question. Some other company it seems will soon be getting some business.

My second car runs out of rego shortly and I have decided to retire it from service. I have rung two local wreckers who advertise in the local rag wanting to buy old cars. Both went to answer machines and both still have not returned my call. On a second call I hung up before the machine cut in to cause a missed call message. Still no answer.

I have attempted to follow up four new contacts from a recent networking event. I have left phone messages and emails asking them to make contact with me. None have! Do you think any offer of a future JV might be forthcoming?

I ran into one of them yesterday and mentioned my messages. Boy was I surprised at the reply. “I have better things to do than chase after people trying to sell me something.” I thought I was making contact to help build a relationship and sure it would be great if it lead to a sale.

By the way, perhaps I should mention that other calls have been responded to with generally a good result for both parties.

It is true that sometimes calls etc being made to us are to try to sell us something and sometimes this can be frustrating, even for those of us who make our living selling, which really is everyone in business. But as you can glean from my examples above none of them were actually sales directed, in fact in one case it was to put an easy sale in his lap.

See what I mean, if your end of a communication is not happening, it could be costing you dearly. Just like in dancing – it takes two to Tango!