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Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Technology is a slave to me
I’ve been thinking about three deals I’ve closed over the last week or so. I arranged a media interview for a client. I arranged a speaking gig. And I got a consulting assignment.
All three deals were done entirely by email, with no phone calls.
The fact that email served as the communication channel for these deals normally wouldn’t have entered my mind, but I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to a recent post by Jeremy Pepper titled “Slave to Technology” in which he exhorted PR professionals to put down their email, IM, and other technology-based communication tools and return to the phone.
There’s no question that some people become overly-dependent on technology, a phenomenon that’s not limited to PR practitioners. I hear way too many stories about people who have been laid off by email, which provides those uncomfortable in confrontational situations with a means of doing what’s required of them without looking into the eyes of the target of their actions. People need to know when to use each tool based on what it’s good at, and the importance of face-to-face should never been underestimated.
But I just can’t agree with Jeremy when he suggests that deals get done on the phone and not by email. It’s just not true. Nor can I agree with Jeremy when he suggests that we should simply force ourselves to stop using technology altogether for some period of time (like one day a week). Sorry, but if a reporter calls to let me know he’s tied up in traffic and will be 10 minutes late to lunch, I’m not going to resist checking email just because I’ve bought into some insipid “no email day” concept.
Besides, we easily forget that the phone is technology, too.
Several years ago, a colleague who worked for Exxon (now retired) sent me a PDF of a page from a 1930s edition of Humble Oil’s salesforce publication, “The Lubricator.” (No jokes, please, this is serious.) The article addressed the introduction of telephones to Humble’s workplace. It offered tips on how far from the mouth to hold the mouthpiece and what to say when answering the phone. It explained why the company was placing only one phone in each department rather than providing one to every employee (people will talk on the phone instead of getting their work done). But the bit that jumped out at me instructed employees that the telephone was not a replacement for the accepted tool for communication: the letter.
The article conveyed management’s fear that the phone would encourage employees to procrastinate until the last minute, not write the business letter, then just pick up the phone instead, a practice the company found unacceptable. Writing the letter was the way things got done and the phone was, well, technology.
So, Jeremy. If you’d been blogging in 1932, would you have told people to put down the phone and pointed them to that typewriter thingy on their desks?
The letter has gone the way of the dinosaur; the U.S. mail is now made up almost entirely of bills, packages, and direct mail marketing pieces. Letter-writing—once the primary means of conducting business—has given way to the email. Not the phone, mind you—plenty of letters were being delivered by mail over the decades during which the phone has been a standard tool. But the phone is a real-time tool (annoying political recordings left as voice mail notwithstanding). Email is asynchronous, one of its greatest strengths.
Is it, then, a stretch to suggest that newer technologies have superceded the use of an older technology, that phone thingy on your desk (as Jeremy put it)?
(Note: This isn’t an attack on Jeremy, whom I like, respect, and admire and almost always agree with. If you’re not reading his blog, you should. I was motivated to write this counterpoint only because so many people commented, “Right on, Jeremy” that I wanted to offer the flip side of the argument.)
To be sure, there is value in a phone call. Your voice conveys sincerity and warmth that is far more difficult to communicate with text. (How many times has an innocent joke in an email been misinterpreted, causing grief for both sender and recipient?) It’s easy to digress into off-topic conversation that can build closer bonds.
But if each tool is used based on its strengths, then it becomes a matter of thoughtful integration of all the tools, not an artificial abandonment of a tool that has become a vital part of a PR practitioner’s communication mix.
I also wondered if, as Jeremy also asserts, PR people have, in fact, abandoned the phone. Jeremy wrote in response to my query that a stroll into just about any agency is greeted by silence instead of the chatter of practitioners on the phone with journalists. That’s not my experience in several agencies I visit when I visit agencies, and I get calls from agency reps almost daily, pitching me on one story or another. But I decided to ask PR people, via Twitter, how much they rely on the phone. It’s certainly not scientific, but out of 23 replies I received, only a few dismissed the phone as a critical tool:
- the phone is my worst enemy...I <3 email and texts...fast and I can respond when I have the time; phone is too intrusive
- I rarely use others in favor of in-person mtgs, IM. IM’s the channel of choice - we’re always connected. e-Mail is a relic.
- mostly EM, IM, Twitter, FB—even email is dying off; phone calls are mostly sales calls
- Absolutely. Hate phone calls. Love e-mail/IM. It’s quick, easy, and people actually stop to think before communicating. Win, win, win.
- I don’t use my phone that much. Seems I can get lots done and get to the point in email conversations best.
I see two results from this quick-and-dirty poll. Most PR people are using the phone and those who aren’t seem to be achieving results anyway (that is, closing deals). You have to wonder how long they’d keep their jobs if they weren’t. Instead, I have no doubt that they are closing deals and achieving other vital goals. They’ve just found that the phone maybe isn’t always the best tool for closing those deals and achieving their goals.
One thing connected each of the three deals I closed by email: I knew the people I was dealing with. I had relationships with them. We could communicate by email easily based on that relationship, rather than play the voice-mail-phone-tag game.
It’s also important to consider how the people you’re contacting (reporters, bloggers, whatever) want to be contacted. Contrary to Jeremy’s assertion that you need to use the phone, there are a lot of reporters out there who’d rather you didn’t. Consider the following passage from ”Care and Feeding of the Press,” an online document from the Internet Press Guild:
Don’t call. Really.
You should not call us to find out if we received your press release. We realize that follow-ups are part of many PR organizations’ normal operating procedure, but in many cases it’s more likely to create resentment. It is appropriate to follow up on requested information, such as a sent press kit or product, but not on a blind mailing.
If we’re interested, you’ll hear from us. If we’ve already established an ongoing relationship because I’ve covered your products earlier, it’s okay to send a follow-up e-mail a few days later to ask if I have any questions; but that’s it.
Now, I know this next point goes against a lot of your training; but take our word for it: Nothing sets a writer or editor’s teeth on edge more than an eager young voice saying, “I’m calling to see if you got the press release we sent.” (It is, alas, common practice to have follow-up calls made by the most junior [read: clueless] members of an agency.) When we’re in the middle of a tight deadline, the last thing we want is a phone call that contains no new or useful information whatsoever. Thus, by making such calls, you’re harming both clients’ and your own reputations. If you actually have something substantive to add, such as pointing out an error in a press release, that’s another story; but you’re still better off sending us an e-mail about it than calling us.
What? How can it be that a reporter tells us, “You’re...better off sending us an email...than calling us?” if the only way to achieve results is on the phone?
Simple. The phone is not necessarily the best way to achieve results, meet a reporter’s needs, or close a deal. The best tool is, well, the best tool at the time and under the circumstances. Ultimately, most of us aren’t slaves to technology. Technology is a slave to our needs.