Why your messages are not getting a reply

This question seems to be one of the hottest topics on the business side of internet.

Therefore, here’s an extremely good approximation about why your message didn’t get an answer yet

Get ready for some sweet sociology, of course.

Reason n°1

This is the most likely reason because of your addressee’s silence.

If you couldn’t catch your addressee’s interest, you’ve made some mistakes: bad lead qualification? Bad copywriting? Bad product? Lots of possibilities about where your mistakes could have been made.

In an ideal society, your addressee would just have answered you with a list of your errors, and maybe a line or two about how to fix them.

Problem is: we are not in an ideal society. We are in the real society. With wars, crime, terrorism and all the nasty things you already know about.

In our society (AD 2017) most of the people get into a profession because they want money, and not because their job is what they like to do in their life. They are not interested in their client’s well-being/satisfaction: they just want his money. Therefore, rejecting and providing an observation about their mistakes means committing 2 capital sins in their world:

1- Denying them access to money

They don’t want to help you: they want your money and/or the resulting fame (fame becomes money) from having worked with you.

2- Discovering their weaknesses

This kind of people doesn’t want to achieve proficiency: they just want to convince everyone else they’re good at what they do. Therefore, if you spot their problems, you become a risk for their plan: you know the truth! (Remember the fable about the naked emperor?). And with such abysmal level of work ethics, there can be only one kind of reaction: aggression. Verbal? Physical? Direct? Passive/aggressive? It depends – but, with this kind of people, you can be 100% sure you’re going to get it.

There’s some people who really love their craft, and are greatly interested in a constructive discussion about their current problems – but, unfortunately, they’re extremely rare. There’s way to spot them, of course (maybe we’ll do another article about it…?).

Now, think about it: is it really worth it to risk these consequences to help a stranger with an uninteresting message?

If you think this is too bad to be true, you can try yourself: next time you get an uninteresting message, reply with an honest feedback about why it’s not of your interest – but, before, be sure to wear your flak jacket and Kevlar helmet: you’re in for a show.

Reason n°2

This is the 2nd most likely reason because of your addressee’s silence.

Lots of people in the business world are scammers – and one of the most diffused scamming techniques is to recycle what your addressee says.

Here’s a wonderful example:

Client: I have a problem!

Scammer: Let’s think about how to solve it! Due to your experience in this field, where would you suggest to start from?

Client: Let’s start from X

Scammer: X is an extremely good idea! It really reflects your excellent level of professionalism: let’s begin!

Therefore, by providing feedback to this kind of “people”, you’re only playing their game – against you.

They won’t stop playing it not even when everything crashes: they will just shrug shoulders and pull out some excuses such as “You know, this job is really really really difficult: you witnessed firsthand how even an outstanding professional such as me wasn’t able to solve your problem! And not even with all that money you gave me!”

Don’t ever think you can put them at the strings with rationality or contracts: they will always come up with an excuse. No matter how silly. Repeat this aloud with me: where there’s a will there’s a solution. Their will is to con you, and you won’tstop them.

Unfortunately for you, the best technique against this kind of people is: silence. With silence, you don’t give them opportunity to use your words against you – because they get no words at all.

A little bit more about this matter

This scamming technique is a powerful weapon takes advantage of the social dynamic we’ve analyzed in the previous reason: people do not want to admit their problems. And this scam technique greatly exploits this fact because it doesn’t obligatorily involves acknowledging your customer’s problems (which, for the record, is the very start of a healthy business relationship: working in a team has a meaning because everyone fills up each other’s failings).

The second reason because it is a great scamming technique is because of how easy is to make your customer look bad in case he won’t bite the bait (again, as stated in reason 1, an aggression): you can just pull out something like “How come you’re a respectable professional in this field, if you don’t know where to look for for a solution?”. Which, at first, might even look as a reasonable approach. But, with just a little bit more thought in it, we can easily understand how it is the very purpose of a professional to understand and solve a problem for his client.

Same reason because when you sit at the dentist he just asks “Where does it hurts?” and not “So, which drill accessory would you suggest for this cavity?”.

If you were wondering from where this quote came from:

A consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time

this is it.

Reason n°3

This is amongst the least probable reason because of you haven’t got answer from your addressee yet: technical problems. Server problems, notebook problems, phone problems… technology is not infallible.

This is a very, veeeery rare occasion: modern technology, although not infallible, is extremely reliable. From our professional experience, we can think about only a couple of cases in which this happened – all of them due to eMails who got mistakenly caught by the spam filter.

Reason n°4

This is the least probable reason because you haven’t got answer from your addressee yet: extraordinary events. Sudden illness, car accidents, a tornado, locust swarm, a meteor shower, intergalactic conflict… Basically, you would know about it from the news.

Solution

For now, the best suggestion we can give to you is:

get better at your marketing.

And, for the record:

marketing is the art of communicating your value to your customers.

Its very definition is enclosed in its name: marketing. “To market” > “to bring your product to the market”. And not to just stand in there: to bring your product to the market in a way in which people will understand how good is it.

It can happen in many ways, but that’s not important: the outcome is what defines something.

It’s not easy, it’s not straightforward – but that’s the best way to get out of this problem.

No way but the hard way, gents.