Email is a tricky thing.  Most people are busy,especially those people who occupy senior roles in organisations that you want to get advice from or want to meet in your quest to find a job, change jobs or change careers.

I have a friend of mine who was a very senior chap with IBM up until about six months ago.  He was a senior guy, he had a PA, but on average he would receive about 400 emails a day of which, he told me, that 10% were important.  The problem was that he didn’t know which 10%.  So, 400 a day equals 2,000 a week.  So emails have got to be carefully crafted when you want to connect with someone you don’t know.

Keep in mind the following key points:

1. Don’t make emails too long.

2. Get to the point, state the reason why you’re contacting them.

3. Don’t let the email expect an action or predict an action from someone else.

What I tend to do is if I really want to get through to someone, I send them an email, I explain to them clearly the background, the reason why I want to speak to them, and I say in the bottom – and I bold this and sometimes I put it in a larger typeface – ‘Thank you very much for your time, John.  I will call you later this week to discuss the matter raised in this email.’ Use some form of words to that affect.  It helps set the scene for the phone call or next action.  Even if they haven’t seen your email, you can actually refer to the email that you had sent previously so it gives your phone call some structure.  Depending upon the persona of the individual that you’re speaking to, they might feel a little bit guilty that they didn’t even read it or even remember it.  So it may form a little bit of obligation on their part.  They’re thinking, ‘Oh, okay, I’d better give this guy some time because I didn’t even read the email that he sent.’

Tune into the next post to read about the next lesson.

All my best,

James E

James Evangelidis

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Tagged as: advice, email, IBM