It’s darn tough to get through to anyone these days. People have become really good at ignoring what we want to tell them.
I hear this all the time from all kinds of businesspeople and salespeople. Emails don’t work. Calls don’t work. Social media doesn’t work. Nothing works!
But I had an experience this week that reminded me that communication does work when it’s something people want, it’s a little different, and it’s from someone they know.
An old-fashioned approach
I finally got my act together to start sending my friends and connections physical holiday cards again—you know the ones on paper that you write with a pen and stick on a stamp.
Since it’s been so long since I sent these, I was concerned that a lot of the mailing addresses I had were going to be out of date. I sent an email to my friends and connections asking them to confirm their mailing address because I wanted to send them a holiday card.
Normally when I send an email these days not that much happens. We are all so busy (and “frazzled” as Jill Konrath would say) that we have become “black belts” at ignoring email.
But when I sent this email it was like I was transported back to the glory days of email when I would get a 20%-25% replay rate. Suddenly my inbox started filling up with replies from people updating/confirming their mailing address.
Several people told me it stood out that I was going back to sending old-fashioned physical holiday cards and how nice it would be to get one. (I like getting them too…)
After the holiday spirit
So apart from recommending that you start sending holiday cards again, what does this project of mine tell us?
If you buy into sales being about human relationships (and I think for selling high-ticket items you should), then this holiday lesson can inform what we do when Santa has pushed off back to the North Pole.
Let’s think about how we can communicate with our target market(s) in ways that people want, are a little different, and help us become someone our potential customers know. Too much of the communication coming from most companies is the same boring old stuff, sent in the same boring old ways.
- Email: We all know there’s too much email. The first thing we do when we get an email is see who it is from. If we don’t recognize the sender, we delete it (quickly.) Can we become someone the recipient actually wants to hear from–and then does not instantly hit “delete”?
- The telephone: The telephone is an amazing invention, but it’s kind of intimate and it takes a bunch of time to have a phone call. Most busy people today will not answer their phone unless they recognize the caller’s ID. Can we become someone the recipient actually wants to hear from?
- Ground mail: There’s not so much physical mail these days, especially handwritten stuff. It’s a pain to write (it takes so much time) and stamps are expensive (73 cents for a first class stamp—I thought they were 48 cents.) But because ground mail is a pain, fewer people send any and it has a better chance of standing out. You can also get super creative (whacky?), see some of the work being done by Dale Dupree and Stu Heinecke.
In the end, it’s not the medium that makes the biggest difference, it’s the human relationship. But if there’s no relationship yet, I’d test each medium, and a combination of methods, to see what works with the people in your market. And yes, to be different, I’d recommend testing some “inconvenient” methods like ground mail—what’s retro is always so much cooler!
Summary
- It’s increasingly difficult to get through to people, as they’ve become adept at ignoring most messages.
- Sending physical holiday cards led to an unexpectedly high response rate to an email asking my connections to confirm their mailing address.
- Building human relationships is key to sales. People respond when they know the sender, regardless of the medium used.
- Consider using “inconvenient” methods like handwritten mail to stand out, while also experimenting with combinations of traditional and digital methods to see what works for your market.