One Message

Hey, everybody Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week coming to you from New York city. We have this gorgeous hotel room with this outside terrace that I couldn't help but shoot a video by this great little fountain, this little water feature. But it has nothing to do with course with the video. I just am loving the setting, and summer in New York is a lovely place to be for sure. So here's what I actually want to talk about. So one of the things that we talked about in the Advanced AE Bootcamp is how your team communicates with clients and internal audiences through email. We've talked a lot about how the fact that we have sort of defaulted to email and Slack. We don't actually talk to people anymore. We don't actually pick up the phone and have a conversation but even in our overuse of email and Slack, we also use it badly. So not only do we overuse it, but we use it badly. And one of the ways that we use it badly is that your folks tend to pack five pounds worth of message into a one pound bag. And one of the things that we talked a lot about at the workshop was how busy your clients are and how they are running from meeting to meeting, to meeting, to meeting. And they don't have time to read or respond to a big, long email. So one of the tricks we teach them is to use the subject line and my message of one email, one message to try and get a quick answer from a client. So number one the subject line that is a need response by today colon and then the topic or FYI, no need to respond now and then the topic, or need your approval by Tuesday colon and then this project name or whatever it may be. So subject line number one. And number two, one of the things we teach is that AEs should really limit the messaging in their action emails. In other words this is an email I need the client to respond to in some way, not just I'm telling them what's going on. I'm giving them a status update, but I need a response. In those kind of emails, short and sweet is the key. Hey Baba, this is Drew. Just want to remind you that I need your approval on X, Y, Z by the end of the day. Otherwise we're not going to be able to place the ad in this publication by end of the week or whatever it is, whatever that urgency is, but I need something from you. I need it on a specific day or time and here's why I need it by that. And really it's that simple. It's very short, it's concise. It is very clear what we need them to do. I need action from you. I need a response. And so the less you dress it up with a lot of background information or set up, or I'm going to tell you about five other projects we're working on, the more likely your AEs are to get a response. And it works just the same inside the organization as it does with clients. So give that a try using your subject line better and one email, one message. All right, see you next week.