Success Central's Success Blog!
Text Messaging and Business
A few years ago I had just finished a sales call at one of my major accounts, and while on my way back to the airport, my cell phone emitted an unfamiliar, high pitched tone. Heck, I thought it was broke, having never heard the tone before. So, I ignored it and shoved the phone back into my pocket. When going through airport security, it went off again. And again, I ignored it and tossed it in my laptop bag and proceeded through the metal detectors. When I got to the other side, it went off again. Now it was getting irritating. I pulled the phone out of my computer back, looked at it, and muttered a little too loudly, "What's wrong with this thing?"
Some kid heard me and answered, "Mister, you have a text message."
A text message? I had never received a text message before. It was something my daughter did constantly, but knew better than to send one to me. She knew it would take me a matter of days to answer it. I opened the phone up and sure enough, there was an alert informing me that a message was waiting. I was still clueless, but figured I needed to check the message out.
After fumbling around with my phone for a few minutes, I found out that the message was from my buyer who I had just finished giving a sales presentation. Apparently he wanted me to confirm one of my deals but would be in a meeting so I had to text him a response. At that point, I was out of my league. So, I needed to consult the text message expert - my teenage daughter. Fortunately she was out of school when I got her on the phone. She was on the bus on her way home. I explained to her my dilemma. She was having a hard time hearing me over the din on the bus, so she yelled, "Hey, my Dad doesn't know how to text. Can you guys shut up for a minute while I walk him through this." Great, now I was the old fart who couldn't text. Her friends would never let me live this down.
She walked me through everything that I needed to know to get through sending the text. I followed her instructions to the letter, and after 15 minutes of fumbling and stumbling on the keypad I managed to send my first text. Moments after I had finished sending my message, my daughter called to check up on me. After a 10 minute lecture on the merits of text messaging she agreed to give me advanced training when I returned home.
Text messaging has increased in importance in business. Quite frankly, I am not a big fan of it, but many of my clients are. I've been selling for a long time and many of my clients are younger than me. So, when they text, I am obliged to answer. I can't complain and ask them to call - they are the clients. I adapt and learn new technologies. When the first laptop was placed in front of me I had no choice but to learn everything about the laptop. It was the future and would play a critical role in business. So will text messaging. The new technologies of today will become critical business tools tomorrow. We need to embrace them and implement them into our everyday routine. Which is what I have done with texting. If your client uses it, you may want to familiarize yourself with it. It may save you a sale or two.
By the way, my daugther wrote me off as a lost cause. Seems I had a difficult time thumbing my way through a telephone keypad. I just could get it. She suggested a Blackberry! Good suggestion.
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
| < Prev |
|---|
Links
Resources
