Persistence

Work stuff because I’m not flying much at the moment. I’ve got to admire the persistence of a sales guy I’m dealing with at the moment. He’s been calling me sporadically for a couple of weeks now. I actually do want his product but I’ve got to run some stuff past our CFO before I can proceed, so just need to stall him for a little while.

He must realise that I can see whenever it is him calling me and assumes that I’m ignoring his call by sending him to my voicemail.

Today the persistent little devil managed to call me from one of these companies that lets you fake a local area code. You’ve got to admire that level of creativity.

Unfortunately for him, it’s not just his call I send to voicemail. I send everyone there. On purpose.

According to HR and the time-management trainer they dragged in to speak to us last year, this makes me officially a baaad person.

I might have had a slight differing of opinion with said trainer on this tactic.

She maintains that phone calls are much more efficient that email in dealing with most problems. “30 seconds on the phone and it’s all dealt with,” she chirped irritatingly, “compared to endless emails back and forth.”

I totally disagree.

I look at it this way. When you call someone, you are making an instant demand on their time. I triage stuff reasonably well. You have no idea how you fit into my time frame. Let me be the judge of how urgent something is compared to the rest of the stuff I’m dealing with.

I pointed out that I always return calls and this way is actually much more efficient. You leave me a brief message, telling me what you want. I have time to find the info and then call you back when I have it. You are not hanging on the phone making useless small talk while I look it up.  It saves us both time.

“But what if it can’t be conveyed in a brief message?” she asked

“Then they don’t know what it is they are asking and they are wasting my time until they figure it out.” I replied

Seriously people if you can’t sum up your inquiry in 20 seconds or 3 bullet points then you don’t know what it is you want.

My record is a 5 minute voice mail from a parent that could have been summed up in 4 words.