Caregiver, how often do you receive an email that starts with “Hey,” “Hello,” or any other impersonal greeting followed by “I,” “I,” “me,” and “my.”
Here at The Caregiver’s Voice, emails arrive daily with impersonal greetings from people who want to provide a service or resource.
Here’s an example from two days ago:
Hello,
I would like to get in touch with the individual who updates your website’s resource page. My name is [first name], and I’m reaching out on behalf of [website] to share a new resource that we just created…
This guide could be a great resource for your site and benefit the families of those struggling with aging parents.
Had this writer taken the time to visit The Caregiver’s Voice Resources page, he would have found all the information he needs to getting his guide published as a resource.
Take time to do the job right.
Vinnie of Meece Car Audio did the job right when he installed new speakers in my car earlier this year. LOVE the sound quality!
My father, who lived his last years with Alzheimer’s, taught me – if you’re going to do a job, do it right. From graduate school and after, I applied his teachings during my career, teaching at universities, consulting, and eventually working with caregivers for people with dementia.
I made lots of mistakes. I used my failures to do better the next time.
While our busy lives make shortcuts tempting, lasting results come from a job done right. Businesses find greater success, like Meece Car Audio (pictured above) when they pay their employees or contractors to do the job right. The same rule applies to businesses that use email as a tool for contacting qualified prospects. Instead, most use the shotgun approach, harming their brand.
Take time, do your research, and genuinely greet the person you’re trying to reach.
Caregiver, if a prospective vendor does not heed the advice in bold above, that person is not worth your time.
If a person greets you by name, that’s a good first step.
If the person then shows awareness of your needs, that’s a solid second step. If their services can fill your needs, then they’re worth your time.
Some are so brazen to make disingenuous remarks. An email Monday from the UK illustrates this with an off-putting subject line: Let me introduce myself.
My reaction, “Why?”
After a personal greeting using my name, I read the first two paragraphs:
Just thought I’d drop you a note to say thank you for all your fab content you share.
We often push it out through our social media channels and it gets a good bit of feedback from our followers.
I don’t recall ever seeing any tags or shares from this person or organization.
I continued reading, just in case I didn’t remember…
In the same vein, and being a bit cheeky, I wondered if you’d link to us in one of your articles and we’ll return the favour?
After reading the above sentence, this was definitely a disingenuous email. I replied:
Thank you for your note, [name]!
Have you tagged us so we can see [your shares]?
She was being a bit too “cheeky” as it’s been three days and she hasn’t replied.
In one instance, where I gave a similar reply, the person tagged and shared several older posts the same day.
Years ago, I replied to every single email out of politeness and consideration. I also answered every telephone call. Times have changed. People have abused these communication channels.
Today, I delete these disingenuous emails. They are not worth my time. Some persist with, “Did you see my earlier email?”
One cannot feign friendship without investing time in developing a relationship.
Interestingly, while composing this blog post, the phone rang five times. Only one left a message – a recorded message about helping with debt collection. Most don’t leave a message.
I return to my late father’s advice. Take time to do the job right; otherwise, don’t do it.
