A triage checklist for wayward communications
 
Your hot new prospect asked you to check in with them at the end of the month. So you send them an email, acceding to their request.
 
And then nothing happens.
 
What do you do? What’s the most effective way of following up and getting new business?
 
In this article, we’ll outline what to do, and when—and when you should simply make other plans. Note that everything we’ll describe here applies to both clients and prospects.
 
Professional paranoia
 
Whenever we send something to a client, we always end the email with a polite little “kindly confirm receipt.” Sure, some email programs and networks will allow for that as a function of their software, but many others don’t. You could argue that this is simply a case of CYA (Cover Your, um, Butt), but it’s really an element of client service. You want to make sure that they got what they needed, and you’d promised them, on time. Without that little confirmation, you can’t be sure.
 
Have you ever had an email that simply vanished into the ether?
 
Never? Really? Contact us. We’d like to know your secret.
 
Of course you’ve had emails go wonky on you. And they’re wholly unpredictable: you’ll never know which one will fail. Worse, you can’t automatically ascertain whether the problem was at your end or the client’s. All the more reason to politely ask for a reply, confirming receipt. That one little step can save you lots of agita down the line.
 
A matter of degrees
 
As we’ve suggested many times in these articles, put yourself in the client’s shoes. Just how urgent was that email from you… in their eyes? Was it the essential documentation they needed to show leadership at tomorrow’s meeting? Or was it a “Hey, didn’t you say that you might need some help around this time of year?” Certainly, there’s a continuum of urgency, so don’t freak out—or annoy your client—by frantically following up on something that they’ve pushed to the back burner. Consider your timing.
 
If the email from you wasn’t too urgent, give it a day or two, and simply drop a follow-up note: “Hey, I wanted to make sure you got my note of the other day. Any feedback?”
 
That’s what you can do for an existing client. For a new client or prospect, it’s quite possible that your relatively-unknown email address got trapped by their spam filter. If that’s the case, you may need to phone their assistant and get some intervention to clear the clog.
 
And don’t forget about vacation bounce messages—because other people often do. It would be nice if everyone used them, but honestly, how many times have you gotten a reply, a week later than you’d expected, with the prefacing comment: “Sorry, I was away all last week…”? It happens. Be patient. (And take advantage of the Guilt Points you just earned when that reply arrives!)
 
The tease
 
In a related story, we recently had a prospective client email us and ask to push back their initial meeting with us. That’s okay, assuming their fire-fighting excuse was legit. But we shored up our bet in our email reply: “By the way, we took the liberty of reviewing your existing website and marketing materials, and have some detailed feedback which we think you’ll find interesting.” It’s true. But it was also a hook/an enticement. It will help ensure that the bumped meeting doesn’t get bumped again.
 
Increasing urgency
 
If you’re being entrusted with a deadline, handed to you by your client, the dynamic changes radically. Because now their butt is on the line if they don’t get what you’d sent them. So follow up. Mark ensuing messages as “Urgent.” Pick up the phone. Call the assistant. Send a text message. Do what needs to be done. Because after a certain point, you’re not being annoying. To the contrary: You’re helping to save the day.
 
An oddball exception: We have a client who’s so busy, that they’ll often get something from us without confirming receipt… and we’ll know that they got it, simply because they didn’t call us screaming that they didn’t!
 
Don’t use that example as a rule!
 
When to give up
 
Sometimes you’ll get a seemingly hot new prospect who simply vanishes into the black hole: You’ll be able to reach the assistant, you’ll be able to send emails, but nothing comes back.
 
This is when the word “seemingly” takes on all-new significance.
 
Some prospects, well, aren’t. Reminds us of a great line from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross: “They just like talking to salesmen.” If that’s the case, move on. This is why business development is an ongoing, and never-ending, activity.
 
 Got a black-hole story to share? Send it our way. And ask to confirm receipt. 

It’s the same way to be smarter
 
There’s a great line in the movie Swimming With Sharks in which Kevin Spacey’s character rudely tells his newbie assistant: “Shut up. Listen. Learn.”
 
Okay, this blog post is over. See ya!
 
The original title of this article was “How to shut up during a creative meeting.” But the points we’ll cover here work for a lot more than creative meetings. And the advice we’ll dole out is about more than, well, shutting up.
 
So let’s talk about 1) where this information applies, and 2) what you can accomplish when you use it prudently.
 
Who do you want to impress?
 
That question implies that this is all about making yourself look good. In a way, it is. But it’s much more about doing a better job in the eyes of others. If you’re in a creative meeting, you certainly want to appear creative. (There’s often a tacit competition in these meetings: “Who can come up with the best idea?”) If you’re in a client meeting, you certainly want to appear not just responsive, but proactive. Prescient. This will endue the client with confidence in your ability to anticipate their needs. And if you’re in a team huddle, you want your peers to respect your thoughts, as well as your ability to both lead and follow.
 
Proactive listening
 
There’s a technique called “active listening,” which is commonly employed in counseling and conflict resolution. According to Wikipedia, it “requires that the listener fully concentrate, understand, respond, and then remember what is being said.”
 
That’s fine. But we want to take this a step further. It’s not just a matter of listening. It’s a matter of eliciting. Of culling. Of, very gently, teasing out information from the others in the room, which you can then put to better use than everyone else.
 
This, of course, predicates upon the dynamic of the meeting and the personalities of its participants. Sometimes you’ll luck out—in a way that most people wouldn’t consider terribly lucky. That is, you may be in a meeting, say with a creative team or a new client, and the Key Person You Want To Impress is one of these loquacious sorts who just spouts on and on for a seeming eternity before running out of steam.
 
If that’s the case, take notes. And remember: this person will run out of steam. Eventually. So take advantage of the fire-hose of info. You needn’t poke, prod, or probe.
 
Conversely, if the KPYWTI (!) is reticent, you’ll need to work. Gently. Little open-ended prods such as “Really? How so?” can net you infinitely more, and better, information than detailed show-off questions.
 
Remember: You’re saving your thunder.
 
Circle around
 
The beauty of being a proactive listener in a meeting is that you have the ability to spot themes in the conversation that the speakers themselves don’t, since they’re in the verbal smoke of battle. What is it that connects what Speaker A is talking about to the seemingly-disparate stuff being discussed by Speaker B?
 
This is not easy. We never said it was.
 
It requires multi-tasking. You’re 1) listening, 2) taking notes, 3) looking for common themes, threads, and nexuses among the topics being batted about. And you’ll score bonus points (in a minute) for acting like it’s no big deal. Don’t sit there and sweat through this exercise. You’ll call attention to yourself, distract the meeting, and rob yourself of your pending thunder.
 
Don’t rush it
 
Don’t expect these themes to jump out at you. Or to come at you early. You may sit for 30 minutes of an hour-long meeting not saying much of anything. It may feel risky, but it’s okay. The point is to not speak up until you’ve either got a good question to ask or an interesting observation to make.
 
We were once in a meeting of electronic engineers (a new client company), discussing a particularly thorny issue with B2B applications. A theme arose among the different engineers: There seemed to be competing sources of computing power in the system being discussed. So after a long session of shooting back and forth, the engineers sat there wearily.
 
We raised a hand and asked: “Couldn’t you just borrow some processing cycles from the ECU?”
 
It was a decidedly geeky question. From a decided non-engineer. But all of the conversation had seemed to be dancing around such a question, so we posed it. It was the first that we had even spoken up in this big meeting of maybe ten people.
 
The engineers blinked. “Who are you??” they asked.
 
It was a very nice moment. They got to discussing the elusive ECU and its elusive processing cycles, and we were happy to have catalyzed that new conversation and the ideas it spawned; later, during the lunch break, one of the engineers asked us: “Are you an engineer?” It was flattering.
 
Precipitate
 
Years ago, we were backstage after a concert given by a world-famous pianist; we were there because our friend, a musical genius, got us there. And he used this same technique with stunning effect. All of the wealthy patrons of the arts were fawning over the pianist, bending over backward to ask lengthy and impressive-sounding questions, trying desperately to ingratiate themselves with him. The pianist, to his credit, was charming.
 
Then my friend posed his question. It was something deceptively simple-sounding, like “Why did you play down the second movement?”
 
The pianist, still in his polite-host mode, started to answer. When—and you could see it on his face—the depth and insight of our friend’s question washed over him. He just lit up in a smile. And he was the happiest pianist you ever saw, spouting about his technique, and different composers, and the choices he made in that performance and others. The other patrons were left in the social dust.
 
When we left, the pianist gave our friend a special thank-you and handshake. He even gave us a special thank-you and handshake, since our friend’s brilliance had haloed over to us, too.
 
So it can be done. It’s not easy. But making it look easy is half the fun.