#987 Email Will get it off your Desk BUT
It won’t get it done. That’s a quote from my friend Anthony Stears, The Telephone Assassin.
Seriously that’s his moniker.
Anthony teaches teams how to be more effective on the phone and, in the case of email vs. phone calls, The Assassin has hit the mark.
Take a moment and think about live, face to face, conversations you’ve had that have gone awry. Perhaps something you said was misinterpreted, or you took umbrage at something said to you. There you were, mano a mano, with all of the advantages of seeing facial expressions and body posture. You heard the tone of voice and derived subtle meaning from nuances like the rhythm and volume of speech or eye contact. With all of that going for you, there was still a misunderstanding, yet you expect to be understood in an email?
The fallacy of the sender is that the message is read with the same vocal inflections he hears in his mind as he writes it.
The famous Mehrabian UCLA study on communications found that our message is delivered mainly through body language (58%) followed by tone (35%) and least (7%) by the words we choose
Understanding this and thinking about misunderstood face-to-face communications, it’s a wonder that email works at all
It does, in its place, but the message from the author of Business to Business is really Person to Person is clear.
I agree with Anthony. An email will get it off your desk, but it won’t get it done.
The hierarchy of effective communication is:
In-person
Video chats and meetings
Telephone
Email
I know it’s tough to navigate in-person meetings these days, but I urge you not to be lazy. Follow the hierarchy above as you choose how to reach out for communications that matter.
Own Your Sales Gene…