I am a member of three email forums in three different industries. I average 166 emails a day, about 70 of which forward to my Blackberry. Partly, this is because I have my Blackberry set to vibrate when I get an email and since I carry it in my left pocket, I get 70 little cheap thrills when it buzzes and shakes.
My Outlook sends and receives nine email accounts when it synchronizes and I have four more emails that I have to check manually when at a computer. Add two Facebook accounts, two Twitter accounts, Linked In, Plaxo and a few others I can’t even remember and it adds up to a significant amount of time in front of a computer screen instead of in front of a client. Managing this mess is a nightmare on (Oops… had to stop and enjoy the incoming email buzz in my pocket… sorry, got distracted!) some days and simply an annoyance on others.
This, however, is the mark of the modern sales warrior and it must be mastered. I imagine it was as hard for an old time warrior to change from a bow and arrow to a musket as it is for me to change from a regular phone to the modern communications suite. There is simply no choice because the world is running away from all of us at a rapid rate.
Several times a year the topic of email proliferation comes up on each forum I’m a member of and each time the complaint is the same. There are too many irrelevant emails and not enough time to process them. Unfortunately, the number of emails rises every year while the amount of relevant ones remains the same. It is akin to looking for your golf ball ten years ago in a clean patch of grass that today contains a bramble of sticker bushes. It is harder to find but you still have to look for it.
It is 1:21 pm in California and I’ve been sitting at this darned computer since 6:30 am. I hate it. My left ear is going numb from the Bluetooth clip and my right ear is ringing from the high pitched whine of my external hard drive. The darned phone is vibrating away in my pocket and I just decided what to do with the incoming messages. I’m going to ruthlessly hit the DELETE key and send everything that doesn’t have relevance to the moment or immediate future to the trash bin.
You will not hear a complaint or bitch out of me. You will not hear irritation in my voice (although you might hear fatigue and disinterest). I will simply send the dozens of messages I don’t need to that black hole in the cloud. Bye Bye, emails. I hope you are not collecting in some undiscovered niche in the ether to come crashing down on me in the future. It may not be the best way to deal with the problem but it is my way.
Happy Selling!