Agreements Archives - Page 3 of 6

Optimal e-mail frequency

Under the title Optimum Follow-up Frequency for New Leads Samuel Smith, a consultant and blogger on business and online marketing, posted the following advice:

„A good e-mail marketing effort doesn’t inundate your customers with hard sales pitches. Following up quickly is the first step. Schedule your first follow-up email to go out two hours after your customer submits his or her information.

From here, you may want to gradually slow your e-mail frequency and aim for about three content emails for one purely promotional email. Depending on your budget, you could aim, at the high end, for sending four emails a week, but with a smaller budget, you can send an email every two or three days and have similar success.

Once a potential customer has been receiving email from you for a couple of months, it’s okay to drop off the number of emails to once a week. The optimum e-mail frequency reminds customers several times over that your product has value to them.“

They’ll remember your product.

“Just say no“

The American reluctance to say no starts very early in life. Even children have difficulty using this word. It was this reluctance that prompted the War on Drugs campaign to encourage children to avoid drugs with the slogan Just Say No (to drugs) during the 1980s and 1990s. As difficult as it might seem to believe, many American children would never have considered just saying no as an option without someone telling them explicitly.

Laboratory Turnaround Time

A report of the National Insitute of Health from November 2007 states:

Quality can be defined as the ability of a product or service to satisfy the needs and expectations of the customer. Laboratories have traditionally restricted discussion of quality to technical or analytical quality, focusing on imprecision and inaccuracy goals.

Clinicians, however, are interested in service quality, which encompasses total test error (imprecision and inaccuracy), availability, cost, relevance and timeliness. Clinicians desire a rapid, reliable and efficient service delivered at low cost.

Of these characteristics, timeliness is perhaps the most important to the clinician, who may be prepared to sacrifice analytical quality for faster turnaround time. This preference drives much of the proliferation of point-of-care testing seen today.

Renege

Going back on an agreement is so common in American culture that there are many words and phrases to describe this action. Some of these include:

Abrogate – To end or cancel an agreement in a formal and official way; to fail to do what is required (such as a responsibility). From Latin abrogates: ab- + rogare to ask, propose a law. First known use: 1526. Example: The U.S. Congress can abrogate old treaties that are unfair to Native Americans.

Back Out – To withdraw especially from a commitment or contest. First known use: 1807. Example: She backed out of her offer to help with the wedding plans.

Bail Out – To parachute from an aircraft; to abandon a harmful or difficult situation. First known use: 1930. Example: If the negotiations don’t work, we may decide to bail out of our contract.

Cop Out – To back out (as of an unwanted responsibility; to avoid or neglect problems, responsibilities, or commitments. First known use: 1952. Example: Don’t cop out on your promise to pay for dinner.

Go Back On – To be treacherous or faithless to; betray; to fail to keep; renege on. First known use: 1859. Example: He went back on his promises.

Pull Out – Leave, depart; withdraw. First known use: 1855. Example: The company manager decided to pull out of her contract when it stopped being profitable.

Recant – To publicly say that you no longer have an opinion, belief, etc. that you once had. From Latin recantare: re- + cantare to sing. First known use: 1535. Example: Witnesses threatened to recant their testimony when the court released their names to the paper.

Renege – To refuse to do something that you promised or agreed to do. From Medieval Latin renegare. First known use: 1548. Example: My friend promised to help me move, only to renege the next day.

Take Back – to make a retraction of; withdraw. First known use: 1775. Example: I take back what I said about the business: they’re not as amazing as I thought they were.

Weasel Out – To evade a responsibility, especially in a despicable manner; renege. Example: I agreed to help my neighbor, now I just need to find a way to weasel out of it.

Withdraw – To remove (money) from a bank account; to take (something) back so that it is no longer available; to take back (something that is spoken, offered, etc.). From Middle English: with + drawn to draw. First known use: 13th Century. Example: After difficulties with communication, the customer decided to withdraw from his contract with the company.

Persistent e-mail follow-up

The following dialogue was posted on ask(dot)metafilter(dot)com in March 2011. It gives insight into how Americans view follow-up.

Question: “What is the best way to word my persistent e-mail follow-ups with non-responsive colleagues?”

I work for an agency that employs about 180 people and the agency’s role is to regulate a technical sector. My role is to respond to the general public’s enquiries. I have to get exact legal/technical wording from other staff. I find staff will sometimes not reply to my enquiries for days and weeks. I’m near the bottom of the pile at the organization and so I have no authority to order anyone to help me.

I send my enquiries to staff over e-mail and need to continue to do so. I am not looking for suggestions about stopping into people’s offices in person or talking over the phone. The nature of the work doesn’t really allow for this option.

How frequently should I follow-up with people for their responses? How should I word my 2nd, 3rd and 4th e-mail follow-ups? What has worked for you when your work depends on the actions of a higher-up colleague, but you don’t want to be a pest?”

Responses:

“If you can’t make phone calls or drop by the office, can you IM them? If you can’t IM, what I’ve found starts getting attention is cc’ing various people if the initial person doesn’t respond.”

“I’d send a follow up daily. Perhaps at different times of the day. Maybe people get swamped first thing in the morning and might respond better in the afternoon.”

“Every follow up after the first, cc additional people that might be able to respond or get things moving (whether it’s a supervisor or not). This will almost always get SOMEONE involved. But don’t cc a bunch of people from the beginning because often people will think someone else will take care of it if it’s sent to a ton of people.”

“Phone calling just really gets people’s attention. It will be more embarrassing for the person and demonstrate your seriousness and persistence in the way one email in a giant inbox with hundreds of emails on a non-urgent (to them) matter never can.”

“I have a colleague who isn’t shy about bolding key lines in a severe email, like ‘This is my third request. This response is needed by Friday at the latest.’ You can try this, but even so, it’s easier to ignore than a voice or face communicating directly with you.”

Firefighting

The first volunteer firehouse was developed in 1736 by founding father Benjamin Franklin. Many early American presidents served as volunteer firefighters, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Buchanan.

People who witnessed fires but didn’t help to extinguish them were often mocked and ridiculed. In the early 1800s, Marina Betts, serving as a volunteer firefighter, would dump buckets of water over the heads of bystanders who watched the fires instead of helping to end them.

Full-time paid firefighters didn’t exist in the US until 1850. There still aren’t many people who are paid to do this job, and today, more than 70% of all American firefighters are volunteers. In fact, volunteer firefighters are considered so prestigious that firefighter is the 6th most common answer that American children give to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Too little, too late

Crunch time – a critical moment or period (as near the end of a game or a deadline) when decisive action is needed. First known use: 1976. Example: The team had trained well, but at crunch time they just couldn’t perform.

In the nick of time – at the right or vital moment, usually at the last possible moment. The word nick refers to notches made in tally sticks that were used for measurement or score-keeping. First known use: Arthur Day’s Festivals in 1615. Example: The fire engines arrived in the nick of time.

Time is money – time is worth money. Similar maxims have been found as far back as 430 B.C. in ancient Greece, however this particular wording is attributed to Benjamin Franklin in his essay Advice to a Young Tradesman.

Time is of the essence – a phrase which, when used in American contracts, indicates that any delay, reasonable or not, will be grounds for cancelling the agreement.

Too little, too late – the action came too late, and/or was too limited, to be effective. The phrase originated in the U.S. in 1935, when historian Allan Nevins wrote in the May 1935 issue of Current History, “The former allies have blundered in the past by offering Germany too little, and offering that too late.”

Can-do people

Can-do: Marked by willingness to tackle a job and get it done; characterized by eagerness to accept and meet challenges; a can-do kind of person; first Known Use of Can-Do: 1945.

Perhaps the most famous fictitious can-do American and cultural icon is Rosie the Riveter. Rosie represents the American women who labored in urban factories and replaced men who had left to fight in the Second World War. Rosie represented the ideal American laborer: loyal, efficient, patriotic, and pretty. Throughout history and up to the present, Rosie the Riveter is traditionally used as a symbol of women’s economic prowess and feminism.

Seldom does an American feel comfortable saying no to a customer, a boss or to a colleague. A no signals either lack of ability or lack of effort or both. Responding with a no to a request leads to that person – customer, boss, colleague – turning to others for assistance. And that means a loss of business.

Westinghouse Company’s War Production Committee commissioned Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller in 1942 to create a series of posters to boost public support for the war effort. The “We Can Do It!” poster came to be associated with “Rosie the Riveter.”

Nike Inc.’s “JUST DO IT.” trademark normally appears alongside the Nike logo, the Swoosh. Nike’s share of the domestic sport-shoe business rose from 18% to 43% from 1988 to 1998.

IBM’s slogan is a playful use of IT as in Information Technology and the pronoun “it.” The slogan boasts competence and forward movement in the world of technology.

Dell Computer’s slogan advocates for seizing the day, or “carpe diem,” and exploiting it. It argues for deriving more function and greater satisfaction from the present moment.

Arrested Development

The American television show Arrested Development which aired from 2003 to 2006 and was revived in 2013, follows the story of a wealthy family that recently lost their money in a scandal involving the family’s real estate business.

In the first episode Michael Bluth becomes CEO and President of the Bluth Company after his father is arrested for crimes involving the company. Immediately all of their assets are frozen, and they have to get by with very little money. Most of the family moves into one house together, and Michael sells their car and jet in order to have a little money.

Despite their sudden loss of funds everyone except Michael tries to keep living extravagant lifestyles, and whenever Michael finds out about his family’s excessive spending and low-income, he tells them ‘no.’

For example, Michael refuses to buy his brother Gob small items like desk lamps or frozen bananas, and he doesn’t support his career as a magician. He also refuses to let Gob live in the family house, and tells him that he can’t live in the family boat or at the company office either.

Whenever Gob has ideas about the company (most of which are illegal) Michael tells him no. When Gob tries to escape from prison by jumping from a balcony (around 30 feet in the air) onto Michael to break his fall, Michael also tells him no. And this is only a small sample of the times Michael tells Gob no, not to mention the numerous times he uses this word with the rest of the family.

Despite his efforts to help save the family and their business (and turning down good job offers to do so) his constant ‚no’ keeps the family from appreciating him. The other members of the family often describe him negatively, calling him such things as selfish, robot, and chicken, and at one point, Michael and his sister Lindsay discuss Michael’s helpfulness:

Lindsay: “You’re, like, the least charitable person I know.”

Michael: “I don’t do anything for myself; everything that I do is for this family.”

Lindsay: “You don’t do it for us. You just do it because you love being the guy in charge, because you love saying ‘no.’”

“Don’t jump on me!”

Accept, Adjust

People are different. At one extreme are colleagues who are reluctant to enter into agreements, but when they do are highly reliable. At the other are those who enter into agreements quickly, and with the best of intentions, but are all too often less reliable. Most people are somewhere in the middle.

Follow-up allows people to account for, to accept, to adjust to each other, to the fact that some people are more reliable than others. Or, put more acceptably, some people need to be reminded more often than others that they have obligated themselves to do a specific thing, by a specific time.

It is an art form in the U.S. to follow up in a way which does not imply that the other person is unreliable: in a brief, informal email; with a quick phone call; “bumping into” the colleague in the cafeteria; always mixing a little small with big talk.

America is a nation of immigrants, perhaps all with their own understanding of what makes up an agreement, what it means to enter into, maintain and fulfill one, including how to know if the other party is “still on the ball.“