Many things about email are annoying. Emails are relentless, sometimes difficult to interpret at a human level, and ubiquitous. I have more than once sent unfortunate responses that have mangled business relationships. Even the length of the email is a problem. The long ones go partially unread given the hundreds of others fighting for my attention. The ones that don’t have something I’m familiar with in the subject line get left to the end. And when I send them, I’m always aware that if I write too much, I’ll also be diminished cuz I won’t fit into someone’s iPhone screen.

Technology is biasing every relationship, every communication, every thought and feeling and connection. We get up in the morning, sign onto Facebook (if we ever signed off), and tell the world we’re awake and brushing our teeth (and we assume the world will care!). Then we grab a cuppa, and either go straight to our desks, or sign onto our computers at Starbucks. And then somehow, it’s 7:00 pm. Hundreds and hundreds of emails in and out. All kinds of relationships to be remembered. I have begun blaming my ‘advanced age’ for not remembering things I’ve said or promises I’ve made. “Oops, I’m so sorry I forgot that you were the one who I promised the book to – it’s my old brain that forgets, not my intent. And, yes, I mistakenly sent the book to someone else, but I can get it back if i can remember who I sent it to.” Kidding, of course. But just barely.

Online I date, prospect, collaborate, meet new colleagues, pay my bills, talk with scientists in far-away countries, have family fights, develop and run webinars and podcasts, write articles with colleagues, share laughter with friends, send flowers and birthday presents, make travel arrangements. I think new thoughts, and moments later they are available all over the world. Disturbingly my life is lived on line, in front of anyone who wants to follow it.

Is my life easier? Nope. I haven’t swept my floor in weeks, and don’t have the time to stop long enough to find someone to clean it for me. I’ve got stacks of stuff – where did it all come from? - piled all around, I can’t find my desk, and my in-box is full. I have no idea what it’s full of, since I certainly don’t have time to look through it. I do manage to get to the gym every day, so I get sunlight on my face during the 2 block walk. Somehow I manage to eat. Thankfully, the Whole Foods flagship store is right around the corner; on Sundays I stock up on take-out containers so I don’t have to cook anymore or leave the office to forage through my fridge that seems to be filled with old containers with fuzzy green stuff inside. At 9:45 p.m. I turn everything off, wash up, and sit down to watch Jon Stewart before passing out in front of the TV. And of course, I get up the next day and repeat the whole thing again.

Do we really want to live our lives this way? I know it’s not just me. What is happening? Is it the computer? Is it the 24-hour access? I feel like I’m in a race all the time, a race that leaves me feeling inadequate, guilty, drained, and always losing. Every Sunday evening, I put a new stack of books next to my desk to remind myself to take off half a day – half a day to read 4 books!?!? – so I can be creative and think new thoughts! But of course I can never find that day off.

I am a thinker. But I have no time to think. On the weekends I turn off all technology (or I’m sure I would die), go to my country home, and lie in the hammock and drool. By Sunday afternoon, I’m a normal person again, but then it’s too late to think, or create. I’m barely ready for Monday to begin.

Do I have to retire to think? Or will I never think again because my brain will be fried by the time I retire? Or will I never retire cuz I have never had the time to fill out the medicare and social security forms?

Exhausting. I miss the good old days. Truly.

sd

I hate being dependent upon email for my life is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

This is a copy of an email I got from a prospect considering whether or not to attend my public Buying Facilitation™ training. I’ve included my response so you can see how I use the decision facilitation model to help the buyer buy. This is unedited: I just omitted his name.

Hi Sharon Drew,

I’ve got a little buying decision process of my own to manage. I’m in a new position, the boss is open to me trying new things to move sales forward, but I haven’t been here long enough to have any ‘capital’ to cash in and ask for him to ‘front’ the funds for the seminar/guided study. At the same time I’m trying to manage the expectations of my fiancée with respect to my job (Commission vs Hourly). The old story. Do you have any sage advice or facilitation questions I could ask myself in order to get me where I need to be.

I know something HAS TO CHANGE and I’ve got to graduate to a different level to have the type of success I want to achieve…

RESPONSE from Sharon Drew:

What has stopped you from making any changes until now? It seems like your status quo has been fine until now, or you would have made a change already.

How will you know when it’s time to add some new skills to what you’re already doing?

What will it look/sound/act like when what you are doing is no longer good-enough? How will you know that one set of skills  would serve you better than another?

What would you need to know about any proposed change (i.e new skill set), before you’d be ready to consider adding new skills to what you’re already doing successfully? And how would you know, at the start, that the ‘something new’ would fit with what you’re already doing so you have a cohesive skill set?

How would you/your boss know before you made a commitment to take a program or learn a new skill that you’d end up getting the tools you seek and that they would give you the level of success that may not be possible for you given your current skill set?

I recognize that there are many choices you’ll have to make. I hope these questions help you make your best decision. Once you come up with these answers, it will be easier to know if adding Buying Facilitation™ will give you the outcomes you seek.

sd

Helping a prospect choose me is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

My T-Mobile Blackberry had a problem: I got a message that told me that it needed my email pass code changed after hours of me receiving no emails. So without any warning and no choice to fix it before stopping my service, they shut it off. They sent me a message with fix options (some of which I couldn’t use because my email function wasn’t working WAS IT!) but since I had no service there was nothing I could do about it until I got to a computer.

When I got to my PC, I was unable to find what they told me to find (Is it me? or does anyone else have that problem? Why can’t I ever find what they tell me to look for? My brain just doesn’t heed those sorts of commands), so I had to call them.

Gruesome. Am I the only person who doesn’t fit into the normal options offered by voice robots? First of all, why do they make me chose from functions that are irrelevant to me, and not give me options that I can use? All of the options are self-serving: how can they get more business. Do I want to sign up for new service? Do I want to buy new capability? No you dodo’s. I want you to fix my email that you turned off without telling me!

Within minutes of hearing these inane options, I began yelling into the phone: REPRESENTATIVE REPRESENTATIVE REPRESENTATIVE, hoping that the stupid robot would get me to some help. But it continued droning on with their options. By the time someone answered the phone, I was already a lunatic. Ok. I calmed down. It wasn’t the woman’s fault that all of that happened. But the rest was.

“Can you tell me why T-Mobile turned off my email capability in order to change my password, and didn’t give me any choice to fix it first – like a warning? And I couldn’t turn it back on with the link you gave me. I’d like you to walk me through my options so we can get this fixed now, please.”

She began telling me to get on line, and I told her I was already on line, and I told her what page I was on, what was on there, that I couldn’t find where she told me to click. Then she hung up on me.

I’ve been known to be abrupt, and be sarcastic when annoyed (ME?), but this time I was relatively nice. Guess she didn’t think so! But I really understood it wasn’t her fault, and I was trying to give her all of the problems I was having and not resolving. Maybe she was overwhelmed by my confusion? Maybe there wasn’t an answer? Maybe she was a new person? I thought that maybe there was a phone problem. So I called back. and back. and back. and back. And each time I heard: “Our office hours are X to Y. If you are getting this message please call back within normal business hours.” It was. I did. I had. And I had no recourse. And my Blackberry still wasn’t working.

I ended up having my tech guy call up and fix it for me. But I had to bother him on a Saturday.

Don’t these companies have a responsibility to help me fix the problem they created? Aren’t I their customer? Don’t they want to make me happy? Couldn’t they have given me a warning that they were going to do that so I could have fixed it before it became a problem? Couldn’t the woman have told me what she needed from me before hanging up on me? Or not blocked me (or whatever happened)? Am I the only person that this stuff happens to? Sometimes it feels this way – certainly more often with phone companies and tech companies than other companies.

Just asking.

As always, I am here to help companies and individuals improve their customer service.

Customer to T-Mobile: Representative Representative Representative is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

But they do anyway. And then they get mad when I don’t read them – especially when they’ve written something personal. They actually expect me to put down what I’m doing and read a one-way missive, interpret what they are meaning and feeling against how I interpret their words, then gather my own thoughts and feelings along the way that I can’t manage cuz the communication is one-way and obviously my thoughts and feelings have no credence – and then, then… then what? I can’t remember what I was thinking and feeling with each paragraph or thought, so I have to go back. And god forbid if I miss something!!

I don’t want to read anything personal on an email! I don’t want to have a one-way conversation — that’s not communication! Why can’t we skype so we can see each other? Or at the very least talk on the phone so I can hear and feel the person? So I can respond to each thought – and then get a chance to share my thought real-time.

On email it seems like a bunch of data thrown at me that I am helpless to directly respond to.  That’s exactly what email is: a place to send quick sound bites of data to fill someone in on some important info: the name of a hotel or meeting spot; friends sharing a joke or daily annoyance. When my lifelong friend Jack doesn’t hear from me for a few days (we’ve been friends for 53 years) he emails me and says, “You ok? I miss you.” Those few words remind me that I have a friend who loves me if I ever get time to pick up the phone. Just a touch. No saga. No missive.

When folks pour their hearts out to me on email, I don’t know what to do. Why don’t they want to tell me in person-ish (so I can hear and feel their feelings and nuances and expressions)? What is it about a one-sided conversation that drive people to write personal stuff about their feelings on a screen that has no human attached, and has shown to be highly capable of being misinterpreted and messing up relationships?

Just like with my name. My first name is two words – Sharon Drew. I tell people I use them both. I tell people I’m sensitive to it. But by the third email when they still address me as Sharon, and the third time I say, “Btw – my first name is both words – sharon drew – and I use them both, and I’m kinda sensitive to it. If you could please remember to call me Sharon Drew I’d really appreciate it.” I must admit I’m about ready to end the relationship. I feel unheard, unloved, and disrespected. Of course it has nothing to do with me, but on email, it feels personal because I have no way to respond that’s working.

I was once at a conference, sitting next to a very well-known powerhouse of a woman. We all had on name tags about the size of a house. Our first names were splayed out in 3 inch letters, and our last names were a few inches below, in tiny letters. My tag said SHARON-DREW…. morgen. And we used the hypen between my names so people wouldn’t get confused :) Anyway, this woman – who was by no means stupid – kept calling me Sharon. I kept holding my name tag in front of my face saying, “Um, my first name is Sharon-Drew” and she kept ignoring me. I felt like I was speaking Serbo-Croatian. Finally I said to her, “What is my first name?”

‘Sharon.’

“Ok. And what is my last name?”

“Drew-Morgen.”  For this, she had to pull my huge first name down to my tiny last name, and ignore the hyphen and my requests.

‘Ok. So why does my name tag have my first name as two hyphenated words?”

“They obviously made a mistake.”

“Ok. And since we’ve been here 5 days, why haven’t I fixed it yet?”

“You haven’t had time.”

This woman, this smart smart woman who runs a well-known company, made up this entire fantasy story, took no conventional data ‘in,’ and then made up a story to prove she was right and I was wrong…. with my own name!

Reminded me of the time when a magazine editor put the name Charlotte Morgan under my picture in an article. I called him to tell him he had the name wrong and asked him to issue a correction. He said, and this is absolutely true:

“No I didn’t get your name wrong. You must have sent it to me wrong.”

Obviously, we make up stories in our heads and assume they are true, and the ‘right’ data is irrelevant if it doesn’t fit our map of the world!

So given that people are so stuck in their own words and worlds that data from the outside that goes against their conventional beliefs is irrelevant, how are we supposed to communicate?? Touch and feel each other? And email is just an extension of this.

I vote to use email only to share data, quick check-in notes between friends, and send addresses and phone numbers. I vote that feelings, personal sharing, thinking, and real communication takes place when people can hear/feel each other.

sd

There is still time to get the freebies for: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Check out the site for more details.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation™: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation™ - the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions. You still get the freebies with the bundle order.

What is email for? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com