When asked a question, answering it is helpful
Mario Sanchez of Shoestring Branding relates a classic car-buying tale: car dealers that won’t answer questions. Even when the question is, “I want to buy a car now. Do you have this, and how much is it?” How many businesses would kill to have someone just email them and say, “I want one, let’s make a deal?”
Car dealers are particularly bad about these kinds of basic things, but it’s not just them; send an email to GoDaddy or T-Mobile support and you’re likely to get something as stupid as the responses Mario shares back from them. In Mario’s story, one of the car dealers actually did something very simple - answered the questions he asked them - and, not surprisingly, sold him a car.
Here’s a rule for all business: if your customer wants to buy something, don’t make it hard by forcing them to do things your way. In the case of the car dealer, that’s coming into the dealership so that they whole dance of sitting in the office, talking to the finance guy (who will try to slip in the extended warranty), and so on can be danced. In your business, maybe it’s something else.
But it doesn’t matter. If someone showing an eagerness to buy is in touch with you, but wants answers via email, email them. If they want to talk on the phone, talk to them. Unless you have some slim-margin business model that makes it sensible to turn away business that doesn’t fit your process, don’t do it.
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This is such a pet peeve of mine and SO frustrating. I spend so much time just waiting on people to respond to me or wasting time doing a dance around the info I really need so I can finish something. Great post and excellent advice for anyone, professionally OR personally.
John:
Mario Sanchez here. Thank you very much for commenting on my story. Could you believe that I’m still receiving spam from the two dealers that I ended up not buying the car from? Worse of all, there is no “unsubscribe” link on any of their messages, so I guess I will have to put in place a filter once I get tired of deleting them.
Many years ago, I asked a car dealership what the price of a car was. The guy said he couldn’t tell me that unless I said I was buying the car from him right then and there. So I left; can you imagine?