Most of us will wake today, our phones within reach. Unsurprisingly, we then go through a ritual and scroll through our emails and delete.
In my ritual today, knowing I was writing this article, I deleted 19 emails.
Which is a nod to the comment “the main problem with communication is the illusion it has taken place”.
Every one of those senders believed foolishly that they were communicating with me.
It’s however reveals to us in the order that we do things, the term I’ve called ‘the hierarchy of communication’.
Let’s look again at our morning, this time you wake, and there is a text, most, if not all, will read the text first.
Let’s go on, through the night, you may have received calls and have missed calls.
Most will look at who called prior to the text and then finally emails.
You see, there is most definitely a hierarchy of communication.
Let’s look at this in our industry.
At the ground level of communication is a letter box drop, laying a solid platform, particularly when done with further communication methods.
Sitting just above this is emails, which can be done across large numbers however, can be bloody annoying and as we know is the first thing we delete every day.
The next contentious communication is social media in my opinion, I can hear you now saying “Macca doesn’t understand, let me come back to this later”.
Next is text messaging, a reliable vehicle guaranteed to be read and when done with high relevancy is highly effective.
Next of course is a call, when you’re actually talking to people.
Hearing their tone and inflections and responding to their needs with high impact and efficiency, you are certainly guaranteed that you are communicating directly.
Finally face to face, the highest form of communication sitting proudly on top of them all. The more face to face, the more opportunity you’ll create.
Every communication method in this hierarchy should lead to the ultimate, face to face.
Just recently, I spoke to an agent who spent about 30k on social media and billboards, yet when I looked at their business, they conducted 30 lesser appraisals this year than the year before.
MONEY WELL SPENT? (When I checked their bus stop, someone had painted horns on their head).
In terms of social media, how many people have messaged you even though you didn’t know them before following each other?
See, the people who are winning are the ones who are spending most of their time at the highest form of communication, and that is face to face.
This is an industry built on trust and relationships, and I’ll end with this.
Make a list of all the people you have a relationship with that you have never spoken to, and all the answers to your problem live in this one question.
