One of the most overlooked ways of communicating with prospects and clients is by instant messaging. I’ve been a fan of this for my personal communications for years, and for a variety of reasons. The first use I found for it was communicating with staff members.
In 1999 I had an office filled with people – in fact, I had a dozen of them milling about from one place to another. It was a big place and I was like the king on his throne. My minions would come forth and genuflect before me, begging my wisdom and guidance. I would mete out justice and the aforesaid wisdom in a matter befitting Solomon himself.
OK, not really. The truth of the matter is that I had a bunch of people that I’d hired to do stuff that I was too lazy to do on my own. And not only was I too lazy to do the work, but I didn’t much want to talk to my staff members. I think I knew they’d give me bad news if I talked to them, so I avoided it.
That’s when I hit on instant messaging as a tool to talk with people in the office. At the time most people used AOL or MSN, but I moved them to a program called Trillian. The reason I like Trillian so much is that it’s a universal messaging program – it doesn’t matter what IM program you use, it works with Trillian. Not only that, but Trillian lets you log all conversations so you can keep a record of them.
There are other packages out there that allow you to encrypt your conversations for confidentiality, but I’ve never used them because I don’t see the need for them at this point. As with e-mail, it’s important to realize that instant messaging is not a secure means of communication. If you’re going to convey confidential information by IM or e-mail, you need to get client permission to do so. If not, you may run afoul of your ethics rules.
To this day, I use instant messaging to communicate with staffers. For people who telecommute or work virtually, it’s a great solution.
