Call or Email

Call or Email

Which is the best channel of communication with your prospects and clients, a phone call or an email?

Advantages of a phone call:


1. A conversation allows discovery.

This is perhaps the most important advantage of a phone call. Your clients or prospects will hardly volunteer any information on an email. But a phone conversation can usually uncover more information like roles and responsibilities, hints on budgets, buying processes, timelines.

2. Clients always behave better on a call.

This goes in the following order, client always behave better in person than on a call, and always behave better on a call than in an email.

3. The human touch.

The tone of your voice speaks more than the characters on an email.

Advantages of an email:

1. Information which can be used as references in the future.

Emails are great for collection and capturing of useful information which can be filed for future references. This includes address, phone contacts, or even documents like proposals and white papers.

2. Does not show anger.

Similar to point #3 of the advantages of a phone call, the tone of your voice can give you away if you are not in a great mood. When you're in a foul mood, but still need to revert, it's better to avoid a call. In this case, a short email response is much better.

3. Non-urgent correspondences.

In a typical business day, you can assume everybody's calendar to be filled with back-to-back appointments. The more senior the person you are corresponding with, the more unlikely you're going to reach him or her on the mobile or desk line. In fact, some of my clients are always traveling. In this case, emails are great as a tool to communicate important but not urgent messages.