The Power Of Personal Contact
This is going to sound somewhat contradictory to my advice to “ignore your email” in my article 4 Tips For Becoming A More Productive Entrepreneur – but hear me out, this is a very important point and so many businesses get it wrong.
If you think about it, it’s BECAUSE so many businesses get this wrong that when you even make a tiny attempt to get it right, you really stand out from the crowd.
What am I talking about? I’m referring to responding to emails from customers and prospects as if they were your closest friend. The fine art of providing personal contact over email.
During last week when Blog Mastermind closed doors I had many emails come in from people asking questions about whether they should join, or after joining having problems or questions about certain things in the program or about their blog.
Normally with email I follow my rule and if I have more important things to do I will let the email sit until I can batch process them all at once (as per my other article). However, during last week – and most of the time in general – my focus is my clients in Blog Mastermind. They pay money to join my program and thus I feel a sense of responsibility to be there if I can.
Life doesn’t always let you respond immediately, but usually during a launch period you are in front of your computer working to keep things running smoothly, so when an email comes in you can shoot off a reply quickly. Nothing impresses people more than receiving a response a few minutes after sending a question, however you don’t have to even be that speedy.
In today’s attention starved Internet world, people have fairly low expectations that they will get a personal reply, especially from the “owner” or the “guru” behind the business. I always have a laugh when an email comes through to me beginning with “I expect this won’t get through to you Yaro, but I just wanted to say…”. Imagine the surprise when it not only gets through to me, but they also get a response!
Sometimes a day or three can pass before I reply, but even then most people are impressed that a personal reply was forthcoming. This demonstrates that most people are used to being ignored (and amazingly, how much trouble they have getting some attention from someone they are paying money to), but it also presents an amazing opportunity for a business owner with the time to respond personally.
