Stop Checking In.

You’re doing more harm than good by checking in with your customers. 

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be communicating with your customers. I’m saying you need to do it with a reason, or purpose in mind. Specifically one that is delivering value. One of my vendors emailed me earlier this week and asked if I had time to check in. Here’s how it unfolded:

Vendor: “Do you have some time this week to check in?

Me: “Unfortunately, I don’t.”

Vendor: “When do you have time to catch up?”

Me: “To be honest, I don’t. If you have specific material you want to run through, I’m more than happy to. Else, we can table it for the time being.”

No response. 

I get that it’s short winded, but I answered what he asked. Some may call it cold, I call it direct. I have no idea what he wanted, and ‘checking in’ isn’t reason enough for me to connect. It’s my duty to our company to choose very specifically how I can spend my time most effectively and efficiently. With that, I can’t risk having a friendly chat for a few minutes, followed by a few minutes of me saying ‘all is well’, then a few more of who-knows-what.

The ultimate challenge is that time is the thing I have the least of.

I’m time poor. 

What this means is that when making a decision on how I’m going to spend the next X minutes, or Y hours, or Z days - is that I have to know where I can make the most profound impact. And it’s less risky for me to choose the known over the unknown, given the information I have at hand. If I know I can spend the next 30 minutes having an impact on my business / leading my CSMs / etc., or I can risk it with a vague ‘check-in’, I’m choosing the former. (I use this as a general guiding principle. I know there are outliers.) 

Again, this doesn’t mean I’m arguing that we should not be communicating with our customers - I argue that it needs to be purposeful, and with value & success in mind. 

Try this: Search ‘check in’ in your inbox and look at two things. First - the % of time you were able to land a meeting with that language. And second - the outcome of said meeting. Once you identify the patterns here, you’ll see why ‘checking-in’ is dangerous. 

Now look through your email for language you leveraged that specifically communicated reason and value, and look at the same two data points - the % of time you have landed a meeting, and the output of those meetings. 

In transitioning away from the ‘check-in’, don’t over think it. Ask yourself one question and do not click send until you have answered that question.

The question is “What value am I delivering to this customer in exchange for his/her time?” - and if you can’t answer that, delete the draft.