Carl Setzer

Was just told about a real estate agent who regularly dumps files on their admin, without any explanation or discussion, because they're "so busy" . They'll just figure it out. Ugh! If you're "so busy" , then you really need to take the minute or two it takes to give an explanation of the file, or task you've dropped onto your staff. Expecting folks to just "figure it out" is a near guarantee for re-doing/un-doing work, which is duplicative and wasteful (which should be obvious). Reminds me of one of my father's adages: "you might think you're too busy to do it right, but you won't be too busy to do it again". Slow down, folks; take the time to set your staff, and, thus, yourself, up for success.

I just received an email with the following request: "if you service the following states, NY, NJ, PA, OH, MD, VT, MI, ME, CT and NH...". I immediately closed and deleted the email, for I'm in Washington. But then I started thinking, "why did the sender blast this out to the entire country?" Today, right now, with pretty much every CRM tool, you can refine your targets. With a few minutes of work, the sender of this email could've culled a few words from their message as well as targeted her message. Too many irrelevant emails and you find yourself in the spam box. This ability to customize your message makes it significantly more relevant to your customers, to your audience. It makes you look more professional, and more knowledgeable. Powerful traits if you're trying to build an audience, or come across as an influencer. Or, if you simply don't want to waste your customer's time. Which is good thing to desire. So, the data is (or should be)...