“You seem quite busy today sir,” I began our weekly conversation with The Effective Detective, noticing that he was scrambling around almost frantically versus his usual cool collected, and seated demeanor.
“Watson, for heaven’s sake have you forgotten we have a seminar to give tomorrow?” The Detective exclaimed, the exasperation in his voice quite obvious.
“Actually sir, You have a seminar to give tomorrow, in case you have forgotten I am your virtual assistant. I am going nowhere,” I replied, perhaps a bit too smugly.
“Quite right Watson! In my rush I had quite forgotten. Since you are here, I wish to relate an important lesson I learned in organizing tomorrow’s event,” The Detective smiled as he realized his mistake.
“I am always interested in lessons sir,” giving him his break to being speaking.
“Watson, when planning was begun for this event, we made the mistake of not looking too closely at the calendar and realized we had left very little time for marketing after the holidays. This required a reevaluation of our plan. We did manage to get some marketing out into the social media realm, and some interest was expressed. However, at the time we had few sign ups, and only a week and a half remaining,” The Detective took a breath, which I used as an excuse to interject – with just a tiny bit of sarcasm.
“Heaven’s sir! What did you do?”
The Detective looked askance at me for a brief moment, but shrugging it off, he continued. “Thank you for asking Watson! Actually, your sarcasm aside, that is an excellent question. I got on the phone and started calling. Actually often calling multiple times. You see Watson, people always have the best of intentions, however, when confronted with real life, niceties such as a seminar – even one that could be quite useful to them – get lost in the shuffle. A simple phone call making the offer again was extremely effective. People that were originally interested signed up, and a good number of people who were wavering were convinced to sign up as well… unfortunately not all… you can’t win them all after all Watson.”
“Interesting sir, but I am feeling a tad dense today sir. What is exactly the point?” I asked feeling slightly perplexed.
“Follow up Watson, follow-up! Many of those calls were not sales calls, they were simply confirmation calls. They were interested, but needed to get through the haze caused by our busy days. The other thing of note Watson, was the phone was far more effective than email. A short conversation explaining the seminar and the benefits were all that were needed. Yet, how often do we just expect people to see our brilliance or the value. They fail to note that their product/service/seminar is not the only thing going on in their prospects’ lives. Follow up is needed, and the phone is simply the single most effective of follow-up there is,” The Detective finished and looked at me expectantly.
“So one of the lessons here is don’t be afraid to pick up the phone, your success level will be much higher!” I exclaimed, understanding the point now.
“Well put Watson. Well put.”
