don’t assume "They" are organized
One mistake I find we often make is assuming that other people are organized. For example, if we call a potential customer and leave a message on her voicemail, and she doesn’t call us back, we assume she doesn’t want to talk to us. We might even call back once or twice. So we “take the hint” and give up. The underlying assumption in this scenario is that the “customer” is organized and consciously chooses NOT to call us back.
Imagine this instead. The “client” receives the message from her and thinks “I have to call her back tomorrow”. They jot down his number on a piece of paper or a post-it note sitting on his desk and rush to attend to some other interrupted interruption. tomorrow comes; your piece of paper gets lost in the flurry of other pieces of paper on the desk and is inadvertently forgotten. You call back three days later. Once again, the “customer” thinks, “I was meaning to call back here. I’m going to retype his number and call back in a couple of minutes, as soon as I’m done with THIS…” Once again, the intent to contact him is lost in the frenzy. That night, the “customer” wakes up at 3 am and thinks: “Damn! I wanted to call X!”. Now wide awake, they lie there worrying that they didn’t call him (plus all the other calls they couldn’t return).
Now it is the following week. You think, “I’m going to try one last time to catch up with them.” This time, when they get their voicemail, they think, “I’m so embarrassed. This is the third time they’ve called and I still haven’t called them back. They must think I’m a complete mess! Now I’m too embarrassed to call back.”
End of stage. You think they don’t want to talk to you and intentionally don’t return your calls. They are embarrassed by their own disorganization and too embarrassed to call even if they could find their number.
How often do you think this is so? Statistics indicate that 60% of us are disorganized, so this must happen at least 60% of the time? I called a potential client repeatedly over a 6 month period. When I finally caught up with them, they said, “Thank you so much for your persistence! I’ve been meaning to call you back many times.”
RSVPs are another good example. We think people don’t RSVP because they aren’t interested in attending or are just too rude to RSVP. In reality, most people mean to RSVP, but never actually do. A dear friend of mine, Diane Furie, an event planner here in Albuquerque, doesn’t even expect people to RSVP from her anymore. She just calls until she catches up with them and asks simply “Are you coming?” The attendance at their events is astronomical and this is one of the reasons. She has realized that it is us, not her!
The moral of this story is, NEVER assume that the person you are trying to communicate with, expect to hear from, or leave a message for is organized. You are wrong more often than you are right (60%, remember). We are all overwhelmed and overworked with too little time and too much to do. Give us a break and call back. We really want to talk to you, if only we could find that sticky note…