Personal Communication Requires an Actual Person Communicating

As modern communication technology advances, it becomes increasingly hard to have actual conversations with other people. I know that seems crazy since we have so many wonderful ways these days to get in touch such as mobile phones, voicemails, emails, text messages and Facebook status updates.  However, we don’t actually “talk” with each other as much anymore, we’re more likely to talk “at” each other.

This is the price of progress. Every time we discover a new communication technology, we increase efficiency while we decrease intimacy.  In the beginning, all our communications were face-to-face and we had to actually talk in person.  Very intimate, but very inefficient.  Then came the telephone, which drastically increased efficiency at the small price of giving up the intimacy of a face-to-face interaction.

But technology keeps advancing and accelerating.  Answering machines allowed people to have “conversations” that were actually just an exchange of messages from one to the other.  Caller ID allowed people to duck personal conversations and send them to voicemail so they could listen to them when they had the time or inclination.  Email eliminated the need to pick up the phone.  Then text messages replaced email.

Everything is getting more efficient and less intimate.  Communications between people used to be actual conversations. Now they’re often duelling soliloquies bouncing back and forth from one person to another.  They used to be person-to-person and now, they’re often person-to-people, broadcast via email, Facebook or Twitter.

You have to be careful to use the right communication tool for the right purpose.  Sometimes efficiency trumps intimacy, like when you’re doing a deal.

Sometimes intimacy trumps efficiency, particularly when you’re trying to build or cultivate a relationship. Real estate is a business built on personal relationships and personal relationships should be intimate not efficient.

If you want to build your network, win over an FSBO or follow up with a buyer lead, you need to build a personal relationship.  That requires a personal communication, which requires an actual person making the communication.

Call them.  Talk to them. You can’t build a personal relationship via impersonal communications.

Tom Benedict
Marketing Director,
@britainbesthome
Google+
www.britainsbesthome.com