Dealing with Unreturned Phone Calls

by Ford Harding

Recently, my contact management software reminded me to call Lois. She is the logical point of contact at a firm where I would like to do business. I have known Lois for five years and her boss for six. Over those years I have made twenty-five calls to one or the other of them, and they have returned exactly five.

The last time I spoke with Lois, she informed me that they were working with a competitor. That was almost three years ago. Since then all efforts to contact Lois and her boss by phone have gone into a void. A few e-mails lobbed in for variety have also received no response.

What should I do? What would you do?

The answer, of course, depends on the reason my calls have gone unreturned. A little voice inside me says that Lois and her boss want nothing to do with me.

But I have learned through many years of experience that it is the voice of my own insecurities. More probably, they find us too expensive and are uncomfortable saying so. Or they realize that my calls are not urgent and treat them as such. Or they are just busy.

Still, three years is a long time. Whatever the reason, I have little enthusiasm for making the call. Another little voice tells me that it is a waste of time--that nothing will ever come of calling these people. Once again, experience responds, cautioning me that one more call will cost me little, to which the first little voice says that a time comes to give up and refocus one’s energies elsewhere.

I did call and this time Lois called me back to invite me to pitch on some work. There was only one competitor and our chances of winning were good. Later, she called to give us the go ahead.

I have many such stories after thirty years of business development. And I have learned that an unreturned phone call means that someone did not return my call--and little more.

Others reinforce this belief. A friend of mine ran into a contact she had been trying to reach for months, leaving many messages. All her calls went unreturned. When she met the man at a conference, he greeted her enthusiastically saying that he had recently referred her to a prospective client. She thanked him and said, "Let's stay in touch." "What do you mean?" He responded, "We’ve been in touch." He equated those unreturned phone calls with being in touch.

A big part of rain making is persistence. Several times a week a name comes up on my tickler system of someone who has not responded to previous calls.

And still, after all these years, the little voice inside me says to give up, that it is not worth the effort, that the person doesn't like me and doesn't want to talk with me. It is by learning to override that voice that I have become successful.

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Ford Harding is the founder and President of Harding & Company, a firm that helps management consultants, accountants, architects, attorneys, executive recruiters, and engineers win new clients. He is the author of Rain Making, Creating Rainmakers, and Cross-Selling Success. Find out more from his web site at www.hardingco.com and his new blog at www.hardingco.com/blog.