Best Business Practices - Email versus The Phone Call

In this day and age we are constantly mixing Old School with New School.  I remember getting my first cell phone “The Motorola Brick”

It did one thing. Now days our cell phones have apps for everything.

Where does it start and end?

For the young crowd, talking to someone is practically alien.  Text messaging is the new form of communication. Uck!

How does an Emailer deal with a Non-emailer? Are these types of people simply not meant to do business together? Or can they reach a communication compromise?

Vs

Which is the shortest distance to the main agenda... is it phone, or is it in fact email?

Phone:  Making arrangements that require negotiations or resolving a simple issue can be done in one or two phone calls. It's immediate. Although voice mail is the bane of our existence, once we are talking with someone, we can resolve situations immediately. There's no need to send a message and wait hours before you get a response. Time is a premium these days but too many people spend far too much time checking emails for responses. It's something that's just hanging out there as opposed to having a resolution. Between land lines and cell phones, it's never been easier for people to reach you immediately

Email:  Making the same arrangements can take days of back a fourth to come to a conclusion. 

Pros - Summarize your conversation with one email rather than an endless string of emails.

Email:  Let's you carefully craft your answers and think out what your are doing. This can allow for some untruths and can be documented 

by the other party. Careful what you email. It may be helpful or harmful.

Phone: Usually you can tell  a lot by the tone of the conversation. Stress, lying, happy, disappointed and so on.  It  is more spontaneous.

It's honest. Since the telephone is so immediate, people don't have the luxury of waiting and carefully composing the "correct" answer to your inquiries. You get the opportunity to hear spontaneity or hear that catch in the voice while an answer is calculated.

Email:  Lets you save pertinent information as evidence, notes and reminders later.

Phone: You may need to play phone tag or schedule a specific time in order to talk to someone.
Email: You can write and send a message whenever it’s convenient (to you), this may not be the case for the recipient.

Phone: Opportunity for give and take. Although text messaging can give you the appearance of the give and take in a conversation, messaging cannot possibly convey the shadings and meanings that voices can.

Phone: It's easier to discern a person's meaning. The voice is a powerful communication tool. It's powerful for the speaker as well as the listener. The speaker uses inflections, pauses, tones and shading to help convey their meaning. The listener is able to use the speaker's voice to help discern what isn't being said. Our voices say our words and meanings but a good listener is able to figure out if there is a difference between the two.

Realtors today, many times opt to take the easy way out by avoiding situations involving verbal communication. The problem with this is that communication skills must be used regularly in order to keep them sharp. It's the old "use it or lose it" syndrome. If we don't speak to each other regularly, we fall out of the habit of being good listeners; we fall out of the habit of using our voices and our words to their best advantage.

Using email instead of the telephone can be deadly in term of sales results, weather it is with a colleague or client, particularly telephone sales environments. I believe that actual telephone conversations should rule the day, not emails. It's one thing to follow up a call with an email confirming information; it's another when you find yourself spending more time with your emails than on the phone. 

Some of us are loosing site as to the purpose of the best  ways to communicate.  We need to remember to return Phone calls with Phone calls and email with email. Let your party know when an email is best or a phone call.