Good morning, Path to Warren podcast This is Matt Warren. This is episode 327. Today is January 21, 2021. Hope you have a great day. I wanted to share something that I realized that it really works a lot. I know in a previous podcast, maybe two podcasts ago, I talked about leaving a message and how when I’m cold calling people and wanting to get an appointment, I mentioned that it’s important to leave a message because you get to provide just one more touch. If you don’t leave a message, you don’t get the opportunity for them to resonate. Okay. Matt Warren called on this day. He’s trying to come see me. So you missed the opportunity. If you don’t leave a message to make a touch. Yesterday I was coming back from Charleston with a coworker and we had a really good day of business development and I realized there was something that I need to share. That’s a good tip. My buddy who was with me said, I don’t think anybody calls people back anymore. The old way of communicating over the phone and calling people and then they call you back. That just doesn’t work anymore. People don’t ever call you back, especially these attorneys that we deal with. A lot of them. My dad has a saying that you can’t push a rope, you can’t push an attorney. So they’re going to call you back when they want to call you back. So my buddy who was riding with me, he said, I’ve learned that I shouldn’t leave messages. I left a call. I called a client yesterday and asked following up on the case and they didn’t call me back and he was all upset and they didn’t call him back. And then he said, and then I called another person and followed up on this part of it and they didn’t call me back. And I said, the trick is if you’re going to call people, that’s fine, but don’t leave them with another task. You should never leave the person you’re calling with another task. You can call them and say, Hi, John, this is Matt Warren. I just wanted to call and the reason for my call was I was calling to check up on this XYZ case. I know you’re busy. I’ll try you back later on in the week. I’m going to send you an email just to follow up. It might be easier for you to respond via email if you have a chance, but no worries. We’ll talk to you soon. Take care. Just wanted to see if I could catch you in the office. Thanks. Bye. I noticed that I did not leave a task for them to do. I simply let them know I was calling, why I was calling, what it was about, but told them I’m going to follow up with an email because it might be easier for you if you’re tied up or in depositions or whatever. It might be easier for them to respond with the simple I don’t have any more information or I’m waiting on this or that. A lot of times I share with my buddy yesterday I said a lot of times it’s not that our clients are not that our clients are trying to not call us back. Sometimes it’s simply that they don’t have any information. They don’t have an update so they don’t have an update to give us, which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with pinging a client. The ol’ Ping like, hey, just check it in. I don’t like to use that word. It’s overplayed and overused. I like to come up with a reason for calling. Like maybe I found an article, maybe I found a blog post somewhere or maybe I have a little bit of new information or maybe my calendar has changed and I wanted to let them know, for example if they called wanting to know if we could come on January 31 and you haven’t heard from them in ten days or so you could very easily call and say, hey, my calendar is filling up. I had a couple of new things land on my plate. Just wanted to check and see if we were still a go for XYZ but you don’t have to leave it with them having to do anything. That’s the difference this old thing of hey, I’m going to be in Greenville wanted to see if I could stop by and say hello, give me a call back. They’re not going to call you back. They’re not going to call you back. If they do, it’s very rare but the lesson for today is go ahead and leave a message but don’t put anything else on their to do list. Simply leave a message about what it’s about and say that you’ll call and follow up later. That way there’s nothing worse when you see that person or talk to that person and they know that they didn’t call you back after you tried twice to call and leave a message and they didn’t call you back. There’s nothing worse than seeing that person. It’s just very awkward. Hope you found this beneficial. It’s going to be a great day and remember, as Mama always says, make your contribution. Thanks for listening.