Call me back...please!

A few years ago I was talking to my logistics manager about an urgent problem we were having. I asked him a vital question that I needed answered immediately. He responded, “I'll get you the answer and call you back in five minutes.”

I sat there bolt upright in my chair, hand on the phone, ready to pick it up the second it rang. I took no other calls, started no other projects, and didn't go to the bathroom because this guy was going to call me back in five minutes.

So, I sat there waiting. And waiting. And waiting. After 20 minutes, with my hair standing on end (I still had some hair in those days) and my eyes wild with frustration, I called him back. He wasn't there. He was in the warehouse.

I had him paged and got him on the phone. Then I exploded: “You said you were going to call me back in five minutes. I've been sitting here waiting!”

He responded as if he was an orderly at an insane asylum who was going to have to give another tranquilizer shot to calm the inmate down. “Richard,” he explained in a patient, slow voice, “I didn't mean literally in five minutes. I meant sometime…later…today.”

I was stunned. How could we have such differing notions about the meaning of something as simple as five minutes?

After going to the gym and setting a new world record on the stair master, I got my heart rate down to a normal level and started to laugh at the whole situation. I had calmed down enough to reflect on the meaning of time to different people. It occurred to me that there is no standard currency when it comes to time. People seem to run on their own mental clocks.

As I reviewed data, talking to buyers, manufacturers and salespeople, I became increasingly convinced that this discrepancy over how we see time is one of the major stumbling blocks in good buyer-seller relationships. People don't seem to feel the same sense of urgency when it comes to responding to phone calls and emails.

Salespeople grumble that buyers don't call back. Buyers grumble that salespeople don't call back. Both sound righteous when they complain. What is happening is that everyone wants to communicate when they think something's urgent, not when someone else does.

Let me explain salespeople: Salespeople call because they want to know if they are going to get the order and, if so, when it is going to ship. They need to know for practical and emotional reasons. Practically, they need to know because management wants to project revenue and profit. And just as importantly, the company needs to plan production, and if that production takes place across the Pacific it becomes more urgent. Finally, many salespeople are paid based upon their sales production and they want their money. Emotionally, many salespeople feel their value is measured directly by the sales volume they create. Salespeople want to feel great about themselves and locking up an order will affirm that they are, indeed, great.

Of course, it's a two-way street. Buyers receive scores of phone calls and hundreds of emails every day. They cannot possibly respond to all of them, so they don't. They pick and choose based upon their own sense of urgency. As with most jobs, that sense of urgency is driven by pressures placed upon them by their management.

Back at the manufacturer or wholesaler, the sales manager calls the salesperson and asks him whether they are getting an order. The salesperson in turn emails or calls the buyer to find out. The buyer does not respond. The salesperson lets it go until the sales manager calls to see what happened. And that, my friends, is when the fun really begins.

A crazy cycle of unanswered calls ensues with the salesperson repeatedly leaving email and phone messages. As a result, the buyer's phone call and email load increases, creating an ever more bewildering level of unanswered communications. The buyer sees the salesperson as a nuisance who needs to be patient. The salesperson sees the buyer as an obstacle that needs to be more available.

This would be a simple interpersonal problem if it were not for the fact that salespeople have an urgent need to retrieve vital information. Manufacturers need to plan. Yes, the buyer needs time to make decisions, but if the decision comes too late, the order cannot be produced in time.

• Salespeople and manufacturers can sit on their emotions and realize that anxiety alone is not sufficient reason to begin asking for a decision just days after the proposal has been made.
• Manufacturers can include actual, non-inflated time constraints when providing sales information to salespeople. They need to say: “This is when we must have the purchase order to assure that we can ship the product on a particular date. If it comes in after this, the shipping dates will move accordingly.”
• Salespeople can make time deadlines a major part of their presentations. They can ask buyers to collaborate in making sure that they can, as a team, assure that shipping dates are met.
• Buyers can let salespeople know they are aware of the dates and if they cannot comply, let them know so that the factory can direct its energy elsewhere.
• Buyers, factories and salespeople can all respond to the first contact within 24 hours so redundant calls and emails are eliminated. If there will be no response until a specific date, say so, and respond by that date.

A healthy sales chain requires that all participants be responsive and responsible in initiating and responding to calls. If we all take our roles seriously, everyone can generate more revenue and make life a whole lot easier for themselves and everyone else.