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There is a constant flow of sales and business self-improvement books that come across the desk for Agency Sales. A look back at two of those works found worthwhile tips on how to effectively communicate with clients in this rapidly changing technological world.

In the first, The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, by Anthony Iannarino (Penguin Random House, 224 pp.), the author describes how one of his clients became a believer in the effectiveness of text messaging.

As the book details it: “In sales, as in life, the most important conversations should always take place face-to-face. That’s because it’s vitally important to convey that you care, and nothing proves it better than your physical presence. When the train comes off the track, your showing up says ‘I am here to help because I care.’

“When it isn’t possible to meet in person, these important conversations should take place on the telephone. E-mailing about a difficult situation tells the client that either you are afraid to have a conversation or the issue doesn’t matter as much to you as it does to him.

“Although the medium should match the importance of the message, ultimately you must use the method of communication your client prefers. For instance, I’m a phone guy, but I have a client — the CEO of a large company — who prefers text messaging. He is difficult to reach on the telephone but responds instantly to texts. When I asked him how he came to prefer text messages, he replied that he hadn’t thought about it. I then asked whether he had teenage children; he said he had two. Had his children taught him to text? He laughed and said they had, and that if he didn’t text, he wouldn’t be able to communicate with his kids at all. He soon began to prefer texting because the person communicating needs to get straight to the point.

“Communication is more than just the message. You need to match the medium to the outcome of your message. We have to be careful about allowing the customer to determine the medium as a rule. Some clients’ preferred method of communication won’t serve the conversation. For example, they may prefer e-mail because they don’t really want to discuss an uncomfortable issue when face-to-face communication would be more appropriate and improve the outcome. Carefully evaluate the message and medium needed to most effectively communicate.”

In a second book, More Sales, Less Time, by Jill Konrath (Penguin Random House, 231 pp.), the author takes aim at the importance of effectively managing e-mail communications.

“I love e-mail. It’s my lifeblood, my connection with the business world. It’s my primary tool for reaching out to prospects, communicating with clients, and keeping updated on my industry. Unlike other digital platforms, I get to choose what arrives in my in-box. Yet at the same time, I hate e-mail. It’s never ending, it’s seductive, and it’s a huge time eater. When I haven’t checked it for a while, I get twitchy. Really twitchy. I feel like I’m missing something important.

Work Interrupted

“How often do you quickly check out a new message as soon as it shows up in your in-box? Sociologist Judy Wajcman,…reported that 70 percent of e-mails received are attended to within six seconds of their arrival in our in-box. That means we stop whatever else we’re doing to take a look. Most of the time, the e-mail is not what we were hoping for. But that’s what makes it even more addictive. Remember what we learned about habit formation? When rewards are delivered randomly, our cravings intensify.

“Johnathan Spira, information-overload expert and author of Overload!, says that his research shows that a person’s recovery time from any interruption is 10 to 20 times the length of the interruption. Let’s extrapolate that and see what it might mean for you.

“Say you check e-mail every 10 minutes, six times per hour. Now, assuming each check takes 30 seconds, your minimum recovery time equates to 300 seconds. That means it takes the next five minutes to fully get your head back into the task at hand. Even doing this three times per hour means that you’ve lost 15 minutes. That’s 25 percent of your maximum productive time, or literally two hours per workday, that evaporates into thin air.

“Once I realized all this it was clear that things had to change. On one hand, like I said earlier, I love my e-mail. I also worried that I might miss something important. Plus, I wanted to be responsive to new and existing clients so people would know I wanted to work with them. But it was time for me (my higher-level thinking self) to be in charge, not my dopamine.

“To edge myself into this change, I did a little experiment to find out just how many need-to-respond-immediately e-mails I received during the week. The answer was … (drumroll) … not a single one. My in-box was filled with client conversations, requests for information, newsletters, LinkedIn updates, personal stuff, and much more. But I didn’t find a single e-mail where failure to respond within two hours would have cost me a customer.

“Clearly, I had to stop deluding myself. In reality, I was wasting my prime working hours caught in a dopamine cycle. Yes, it felt good whenever a shot of it coursed through my system, but the cycle was definitely tied to me feeling constantly overwhelmed. It was time to take action.”

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