Self-phone and respect

Second post about self phone and Italian habits.

As I mentioned everyone as a self phone, some more than one, and it’s almost always connected.

So people want fast answer and seems to be always in a hurry.

And they can get nervous if you are not immediately reachable.

My experience, what I’d like to share with you, is slightly different: what they are looking for is contact and attention. Not necessary immediate answers.

You can teach them, you can “instruct” people, that you could not always be on-line because you are giving the deserved respect and attention to the person you are talking to as you would do for them if you were listening to them. So you need to switch off your phone from time to time.

What you need to do is to provide them a voice mail box with a nice welcome message and call them as soon as you really can.

I once tried this message and got good feedback: “I cannot take you call right now because I’m talking to someone who deserves all my attention and time. I promise to call you back as soon as I can to give you the same respect”.

What could you suggest?

The self-phone etiquette

The world changed dramatically about 20 years ago. Especially in Italy. It’s hard to set the exact turning point.

The late Eli Goldratt used to say that you have a true change in technology when you have a real change in paradigms and behaviors.  That’s what happened.

I’m talking of self phones and the revolution, which is much powerful than an evolution, they caused which can be summarized by the iconic fact that we replaced the old question “hello who’s talking?” with “hello where are you?”.

What did self phone changed of the Italian way of doing business? Which are the impacts caused by this new tool which sometime seems to have reached the role of goal?

Two the main area I’d like to cover and suggest:

the “use of self phone” etiquette

the consequences for availability

Consider that Italy is one of the country with the highest presence of mobile phones.

A recent research by Nielsen pointed out that we owned more than 20 millions smart phone which represent about the 45% of the self phone used in Italy. It’s about 1 each Italian inhabitant.

We are cell phone addicted, that’s true.

And it seems we are unable to switch off. Even during sales meeting.

But, and that’s the point I’d like to make, don’t dare to be interrupted by a phone call if you are the salesman and not the client.

For a weird and inexplicable reason the client has the right to keep her/his phone switched on while you must turn it off.

So before entering a meeting with an Italian VIP, and we mentioned that everyone believes to be a VIP, please have your phone switched off if you do not want to waste the chance to make business. And in case you forgot it inside your coat pocket, and someone search you: let it ring and switch it off as soon as the bell stops. You will win some respect from your client.