And using email doesn’t always help!
Selling Radio Direct with Pat Bryson
Email today is an integral part of our daily communication with both co-workers and clients. Sometimes we fire off an email in haste and regret later what was contained in it. Sometimes we send emails to people who never check their emails. We should always ask our clients and co-workers what their favorite method of communicating might be. It might be texts: it might be phone calls: it might be seeing your smiling face in person. What ever the selected virtual method, it will never take the place of face-to-face communication.
Today let’s review our email skills and etiquette.
- Don’t use an email to “let off steam”. Save your anger or criticism for face-to-face meetings. Take a break, calm down and wait a few minutes. Strategic delays will help you to preserve relationships.
- Set a five or ten minute “don’t send rule” for most of your email. Save them to your drafts. You’d be amazed how looking at your email again after a slight delay will allow you to correct a poorly written message.
- Always use spell check. Typos make you seem careless or ignorant. And remember spell check will not always catch things like the misuse of “too”, “to” and “two”. You need to be vigilant about grammar.
- It’s fine to use some humor in your messages, but frequent chain jokes or pictures will give the impression that you have nothing to do. Be careful with “emoticons” as well..
- Be considerate, polite and brief in all messaging.
- Dnt ovr abbrvt.
- Don’t over use alert levels.
- Use CC with restraint.
- When sending an email to a long recipient list, code as a group address for brevity and privac.
- Check the address to make sure you are not sending to the wrong person. That can be embarrassing!
- ALL CAPS IS FOR SHOUTING!
Happy Selling and happy communicating!
Pat Bryson is an internationally known speaker and trainer specializing in training salespeople and managers.
She has consulted stations in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe and Central Asia. Her career has included on air, salesperson, sales manager and general manager.
Since opening BBI, she has travelled extensively and has spoken at most major radio conventions on three continents.
Pat is the author of two books, “A Roadmap to Success in High Dollar Broadcast Sales” and “Successful Broadcast Sales: Thriving in Change”.