Strategic Design | marketing & branding thoughts by Nick Rice

There are so many things I love about communicating via email:

• low effort
• trackable
• easy to revise in order to get "perfect"
• immediate
• available 24/7
• not restricted by time zones
  
• impersonal
• searchable
• you know when the recipient receives/opens it
  
• the list goes on...

Unfortunately, email is a poor way to build relationships. We all know that business is built upon relationships - especially in my role as a business developer. No one wants an account executive that stays in the office all day. They want their acct exec to be in front of them. Unfortunately, half of my job is project management. That requires the exact opposite. Good PM's are always in the office. They are always in touch with what their teams are supposed to be working on and where they are supposed to be in relation to the status of the project.

Email makes it too easy. It's too easy to confuse the quantity of communication with the quality. When it comes to quality, nothing is better than face to face. When you're in person, there's no guessing about the other person's reaction to your words, presentation, or comments. Yes, it takes more time to be face to face; but how much time is wasted trying to interpret an email reply? How much time is wasted before you pick up the phone?

I know it's just basic blocking and tackling. But that's the point.

Seth Godin's post about looking me in the eye prompted me to write about email. He gave a challenge, for one week try to do as much in person as possible. I'm going to try. Are you?

technorati tags > email, in person, communication, sales, project, management