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Saying Thank You To Your Prospects

By January 22, 2013Blog
Saying thank you

It never ceases to amaze me how little time it takes business people to send a thank you email, or text, and how many miss this opportunity to build rapport with their prospects, customers and business network.  Perhaps these people don’t realise the power of those two little words, “thank you”.  Perhaps if they did, they would take 10 seconds out of their busy day to send a thank you message to someone when they would ordinarily say that “thank you” if they were sat in person having the same conversation.

I was recently contacted out of the blue by an SEO company.  They were offering me a free “Google website review”, naming a number of things that they could provide answers for, once their review had been completed.

Whilst I appreciate that they may be good at what they do, I really didn’t need their help.  For one, HubSpot and Google have a number of tools that provide me with the same answers for free; the effort required to do the work myself is not much different.  Secondly, they had not bothered to see if I needed their help, whether I had any knowledge in this field or had ongoing help from someone who did: this very talented conversion specialist.

Now, this is one of many unsolicited emails I get each week from someone asking me if they can help me to improve the SEO of my website yet I still sent them a thank you email with a brief reply indicating that I already did these analyses myself using the aforementioned, readily available, free online tools.  I didn’t have to show them this courtesy, but I chose to.  Did they reciprocate?  Nope!

Why email etiquette is so important in business?

When someone takes the time to respond to your unsolicited sales email, the very least you can do is say “thank you”.  How long does it take?  Exactly!  No time at all.  When that person wants what you offer in the future (if they ever do), will they come back to you or will they spend their money with a company who will take 10 seconds out of their day to show them some courtesy.  Remember, they may not need this particular offering but they may need another one of your products or services in the future.  Have you left the door open for that prospective purchase in the future?

If you would say thank you for something during a face-to-face conversation, is it not just as important that you say it during the same conversation on email, or on social media for that matter?  What sort of rapport and business relationships are you building by not honouring these simple rules in the modern day?  Communication methods may have changed but we still live in a society governed by the same fundamentals.  They won’t change.  They’re here to stay.

A little email etiquette goes a long way, and your prospects will always want to be treated with a little respect, appreciation and courtesy.

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