Your Personal Invitation to Lunch - Follow-up

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

I was out all day Monday delivering training; not a single voice-mail or email from my five invitations. Disappointing, but we are not done yet!

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

One no-thanks so far, by email. At least that one person responded; the other four have not done so yet.

“I really don’t think it makes sense for us to meet at this point. XXXXXXX has no money available for the kind of work that you do; I don’t think there is a fit and it would not be a worthwhile use of your time or mine.”

I erase one penciled-in date from my diary.

Then:

“Thanks very much for your luncheon invitation. Our training requirements are well covered at this time, this along with my hectic schedule, means I need to decline your invite.”

Two turn-downs out of five; does this mean that three are still in the running?

Both the two turn-downs indicate a pre-supposition on their parts, one of the kind of work that I do, the other that I was selling training.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A third not-quite-yet, also known as a “Continuation”. Not this day, let’s do it in April.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Two outstanding invitations; no reply. The dates were for tomorrow and Friday.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Well, there you go.

1. Two replied and said “No Thanks”.
2. One replied and said “Later”.
3. And two did not bother to reply. At all. In any way.

Given that this was an experiment to see if difficult-to-reach-by-phone could be reached by a personal invitation, the experiment was a success.

It has taught me (I think) that those contacts who are difficult to reach by phone are also difficult to motivate by personal letter-mail.

WHY they are difficult to reach is another question:-

• Perhaps they just can’t stand me.
• Perhaps they never visit their mail-box down in the basement.
• Perhaps they are just plain rude and their parents never taught them to be courteous.

But see also The Exit Interview

Regardless, it suggests to me that difficult-to-reach-by-phone translates quite easily into difficult-to-reach, and that difficult-to-reach-by-phone can be easily dropped as not-worth-my-time-and-effort.

Talk to Me !