Being a Professional to Every Generation, Regardless of Your Own Preferences

OK.

I’ve been holding off on this part of the course.

Now I let it all hang out here and be totally candid with you.

There are in fact some generational issues when it comes to how the phone is used.

Different people of different generations use the phone differently.

I’m not here to advocate for anyone January no one generation’s better than the other.

It’s just different.

But here’s the thing.

If you are in business or running a business or an employee and a business with very few exceptions you’re going to try to appeal to people of all sorts of generations if you’re in a bigger organization.

There may be people from 16 to 80 working in your organization.

If you have any kind of a business it could be manufacturing designer T-shirts.

Yeah maybe most of your customers are twenty two years old but you might have some that are seventy five years old.

Buying something for their grandchild.

Why needlessly alienate any customer or any prospect.

So I’m advocating that you essentially become multilingual fluent in generation speak when it comes to dealing with the telephone and deal.

Different people are bad at different things.

Believe me I know people my age and older people who are pitching and screaming for 10 years refusing to use text.

Well if a client sends you a text question you should text back the answer.

So that’s the fault of people my age and older who were grumpy.

So stick in the muds not open to new things.

That was a problem that hurt them in business communication because let’s face it these days you could be 62 years old and have a 28 year old boss in some corporations a 28 year old send you a text at 3 p.m. they’re going to want a text answer response if they’re in another city or another location or maybe even down the hall they don’t necessarily want you to get up or walk all the way down there send them a big memo or call them.

They just want to text back.

So I want you to realize I’m not here is just a grumpy old man criticizing the young ones old people can be very guilty of not adapting to new technology and new uses of the phone.

A lot of older people can say oh I don’t want to do Skype video or zoom because of me.

They’re nervous about the fact that their hair is falling out and they’ve got wrinkles and jowls so every age group has certain blind spots.

So now that I’ve gotten that over the way let’s talk about a big problem with a lot of young people in the workplace.

Again we talk to the very beginning of this course about the difference between private life social life and business life.

I know a lot of people I have young nieces and nephews where if I were to call them it would be considered just a ridiculous absurd breach of etiquette almost obnoxious.

If I were to leave a voicemail message beyond the pale it will not be listened to and it will not be returned.

And we get along perfectly fine.

We have fine relationship is just that’s not how people of a certain generation 18 19 20 liked to communicate as there.

Of course there are exceptions and of course I’m making some generalizations here but I’m just trying to be helpful.

There are certain people of certain generations where you just don’t answer the phone.

It’s just not something you do.

You’ll see someone called and that’s kind of a reminder to send them a text or you’re going to bump into them later but you just don’t answer the call.

Well if you do that in business you may be fine.

If absolutely every single person you deal with every investor every client every customer is your age group too.

But how often does that really happen.

If you have clients customers colleagues investors other people calling you pick up the phone answer it if you’re in a critically important meeting obviously don’t.

But if you’re not doing something wildly important that takes 100 percent of your attention.

Answer the phone.

People hate it when they can never get a hold of account representative are a marketing director that’s supposed to be in charge of their camp and they hate it.

They absolutely can’t stand it.

If they’re let’s say over 40 or a certain age.

Younger people may think.

No problem.

I’ll send a text.

You have to realize everyone is different.

And if you’re dealing with a customer client prospect they expect you to bend to them.

If they’re the ones writing a check if they’re the ones paying you in the form of being a customer or a client or a boss they expect you to bend to them.

They don’t really care the way you want to communicate.

Sorry if that sounds cynical I just think that’s human nature and we have to reflect that.

It’s selfish for you to expect people to bend to your needs again if it’s your company and you want to run it the way you want to and you don’t really care if you alienate people then by all means don’t change.

But the first thing I really want to stress is you’ve got to answer the phone that leads us to the next topic.

Voicemail and there are generational issues here too but there are people who are guilty of all ages on bad voicemail etiquette that in the next lecture.