The Death of the Business Phone Call – and What It Means for You

My phone isn’t ringing. I don’t mean business is slow. In fact, I’m fortunate to get inquiries almost every day–but it’s almost always through email. It’s not just me (or teenagers, who have been busy texting and IMing for the past half-decade). In conversations with dozens of executives, I’m hearing over and over that except for scheduled calls–conference calls and other appointments–the era of the business phone call is over.

 

Phone operators--and phones themselves--are both a thing of the past. Photo by Adoph B. Rice Studio.

 

I don’t really regret its passing. The phone has never been as good as an in-person meeting, with all its visual cues.  (And with broadband and other web technology like DimDim, we now have the chance to recapture that experience virtually.) Email is infinitely more efficient–even if there is the lurking chance of misconstruing a nuance or making an embarrassing typo. And hey–in the iPhone era, it’s not like we’re without phones or the possibility of calling, since we’re carrying them 24-7, even if their principal function is as a camera, music player, and web browser.

But phones did offer the chance to build relationships, to “chit-chat” about families or hobbies or weekend plans in a way that seems superfluous and forced in a corporate email exchange. And those odd moments and casual exchanges often formed the cement that built long-lasting business connections.

So what do you think we’re losing–or gaining–with the death of the business phone call? Or am I overstating it entirely?

Tips for Content Creation

For many businesses, there’s a constant pressure to create: blog posts, podcasts, tweets, and more. How do you maximize efficiency while regularly pumping out content that’s valuable to your readers? Here are a few of my favorite tips:

 

"Batching" - doing many similar tasks at once - is key to maximizing your efficiency.

 

 

• Twitter: Schedule at least some of your posts in advance using a service like HootSuite (my choice) or TweetDeck.
• Podcasts: If you’re giving a talk, record it and use free software like Garage Band or Audacity to turn it into podcasts. I’ve now got over 60 podcasts online, covering subjects from personal branding to media relations to social media.
• Video: Batch ‘em. If you want to go (semi) fancy, you can hire a videographer (I tapped a local film grad student) to come film you for a half-day. It took preparation–creating talking points and coming up with topics in advance–but we banged out a dozen videocast episodes in one day, which I’ve been steadily uploading at the rate of about one a month.

What are your best time-saving tips for creating great content?

Unstoppable Online Branding

Tomorrow, I’m giving a talk on “Unstoppable Online Branding” for Somerville Local First, a group that works to help local businesses thrive. A few tools and sites I’ll be talking about:

• Chartbeat. For some businesses, Google Alerts are enough to keep you informed about what’s being said about you online. But if you’re the subject of a lot of chatter – or important breaking news – you may want to kick it up a notch with real-time info, Chartbeat’s specialty.
• Flowtown. What social networks do your customers use? Where do they congregate? No need to guess anymore: if you’ve got an email list, Flowtown can comb the data, enabling you to make rational, analytical decisions.
• Location-based services. Hard to predict whether Foursquare, Gowalla, or Facebook Places will emerge victorious from the cage match, but it’s clear that with increasing numbers of smartphones, the rise of GPS, and the ability to reach customers with offers and coupons when they want them most–i.e., when they’re proximate–this will be a big deal in the future.
• Groupon. Some businesses love it, and praise its ability to draw in thousands of new customers. Others condemn it for virtually bankrupting them with hordes of one-time shoppers grabbing the bargain, never to return again. However you look at it, Groupon is a major phenomenon. Frankly, my sympathy is with Groupon here (businesses: if you couldn’t afford the offer, why on earth would you have green-lighted it?).  A phenomenally powerful tool if you harness it correctly.

What are your favorite new online marketing and branding tools?

Consulting Best Practices

I just finished up an excellent few days in Hilton Head, SC at a best practices summit organized by consulting guru Alan Weiss. About 70 top consultants talked about industry challenges, case studies, and ways to improve our performance–because, as I advise my clients, it’s essential to make sure you’re staying ahead of the curve.

Business is changing at breakneck speed, and we have to learn new skills to stay ahead. Photo from New York Public Library Collection, New York, 1936.

My best take-aways?

• The most value comes from “perpetual motion machines” of innovation. How can you leverage the power of a community to enhance overall value (as with Apple and the apps store)?
• You can tell within one meeting if you and a client will be a good fit. Ask the right questions and save everyone agony down the road.
• The lowest-hanging fruit (for potential clients/buyers) are people whom you already know, and who already know you.
• Because of changing market conditions, within five years, you can’t afford not to be selling both to corporations and to individuals.
• Don’t save too much information, or you’ll get paralyzed by it. Save only what’s essential–and make that easy to find and access.

What are your best practices for 2010 and beyond?

The Best Tech Toys

Working as a marketing consultant, there are two main fears in life–that you’ll be out of touch during a crisis, and that if your data goes down, your life will follow shortly thereafter. Here are my favorite indispensable business tech toys.

• Carbonite. This online backup system is cheap ($50/year) and saves everything offsite–automatically! I haven’t had to use its recovery function yet, but am swimming in peace of mind.
• A mobile broadband card. Admittedly, the friendly Sprint store gentleman who first tried to install it on my laptop ended up causing a dire problem, causing me to come close to losing all the data on my computer (which would have required me to make use of my Carbonite backup system). I’m also intrigued by new reports about Virgin’s mobile broadband service, which uses the Spring 3G system but appears to be both cheaper and have fewer contractual strings attached. Any experiences with it, readers?
• Amazon Kindle. I know, the iPad is hot hot hot. But the Kindle’s E-Ink screen (not backlit, computer-style) is easy on the eyes, super-light, and perfect for keeping up with your daily newspapers.
• iPhone. Ironically for a phone, the worst part of this sleek and amazing device (besides their new “no unlimited usage” shtick) is the phone. Verizon’s cellular service kicks AT&T’s behind, but that’s life under a monopoly, folks. Beautiful phone, amazing still and videocameras, and a world o’ apps.
• A landline. These days, this is the most transgressive part of the list. Want to cover your back when AT&T’s networks are overloaded, in case of disaster or emergency, or just as a professional beachhead? Go old school and have an “old-timey” landline. There, I said it.

The landline: So last century - or is it? Photo by Macinate.

What are your tech essentials?