Stop Being The Jerk That Doesn’t Reply To Emails And Messages

The success of your job or business depends on your ability to effectively communicate with others. Yet the countless stories around struggling to do business with each other is staggering. Especially when that struggle is as simple as not replying to emails or messages.

If you want to build and grow your business, communities and cities you need to engage with each other more diligently—especially through emails and messaging. It has become far to commonplace to receive a message, read it and not reply. This is especially frustrating now that our phone is always within arms reach. If you have time to like an Instagram post, you have time to email or text back with at least two sentences.

The excuse of you’re busy is bullshit—we are all busy. Business can be a grind, but yet, everyone is after the same thing—sustainability. It takes time and the help of others to get there. So stop sabotaging your future success by being the asshole that doesn’t reply to messages. You don’t know who will be your great allies, customers or clients. And how you treat one person speaks volumes to how you treat everyone.

Treat others how you would like to be treated. An acknowledgement and some sort of reply go a long way to building relationships and referrals. The reason this behavior is killing your business is because the opposite of love is not hate it is indifference. Having no one that gives a shit about you or your business is unsustainable.

Worse yet, having negative feelings attached to you or your business will not only hurt you today, but also be devastating down the road. In a service based world with many options if you don’t provide a reasonable standard of service people will contact your competitors and help them grow. Often what happens is when you can’t say yes, you don’t want to say anything bad or disappointing someone so you say nothing until you can say yes. But that deferral of action or response is killing your business.

Reply to people, say thank you, I’ll get back to you, can I have more information, not right now, contact this person instead, I don’t know the answer you seek, etc. Any reply of acknowledgement is better than silence. It will go a long way in making your business sustainable.