 I don't know about you, but I receive probably 400 or 500 emails a day, which means I don't respond to all of them. And I'm probably not the only one. There's probably a lot of event planners out there and site selection professionals that are filtering through what emails to answer. We're going to talk about how to get your email to the top of the list and hopefully garner a faster response. Hey, everyone. So if you're in hotel sales or even in site selection and you've been sending emails to clients or even prospective clients and you haven't seen a lot of return emails, there's a chance there's something in the email that's prohibiting that meeting planner from acting on it in a timely manner. So this week's blog post and video is about that. It's about dealing with unresponsive clients and getting them to get back to us in more of a timely manner. Now keep in mind, you can follow all the tips and tricks that I've outlined in my blog over at LeanneCallerWood.com and you can still not garner a response. There's a lot of times the planners quite literally just don't have attention today to get back to you and a lot of times their unresponsiveness is not deliberate. It is just part and parcel of their extremely busy lives and they just cannot attend to everything on their plate. So they start to prioritize. So we can't do anything about controlling their prioritization of their to-do list and their action plans in the day. But here's what we can control and that is the communication that we're sending to them. And hopefully there's a way that we can tailor it just a little bit so that it starts to filter to the top or at least gives the planner an opportunity to be able to respond very quickly to your request. So A, you're not left hanging and B, then you actually have something to move forward with in the program. So one of my biggest tips when you're creating an email that's going to an event planner is to ensure that that email has a call to action. Call to action defined is simply that it is a question that garners an actionable response. So what is a typical call to action for a hotel sales person inquiring about their program? It could be as simple as what is your decision date on this program? So there's an easy one. That's something that is a call to action. It requires a response and it's something quick and easy that they can respond back to and it gives you a little bit more information to go on. Now there are some emails that have received from various hotel salespeople over the years where there are so many calls to action. I don't even know where to start. I'm almost overwhelmed with the amount of answers that I need to provide. So in that case, if there's an opportunity for you to pare down your call to actions and only have a couple or even just one solid super good call to action in that email, that would probably garner a response a lot quicker than rattling off 10 questions that I now need to think about and get back to you on. So the call to action is a big one. Now another one that you can include is a consequence for silence and in the hotel world, this is actually quite an easy one. If a planner cannot respond in a timely manner, it might be easy for you to say, hey, if I don't hear from you by such and such a date, these prices may no longer be valid. So that is something that you can do is include a consequence to them not getting back to you. And of course, the easiest one or rather the one that's in your control is to take responsibility for action and even outline some of the things that you are going to do to help the planner along for for an RFP for a program to a meeting planner. This could be as easy as saying, if I don't hear from you by Thursday, I will go ahead and do this and this to the space and send you another update. Again, you got to take a look at the program, take a look at the information you're trying to get from the planner to kind of craft what the responsibility you can put on your plate to take off of their plate. But oftentimes, if you're able to do that, then the planner sees that you're providing value and sees that you are actually trying to help them out during this busy time. And even in that simple realization might push them to respond a little bit faster. So give that one a try. Now oftentimes in the email, there's a lot of information that the meeting planner has to filter through to get to the nuggets. So make sure that your email doesn't include a lot of the fluff that that particular meeting planner may not need. Planners will react differently to what you include in an email, but whether it's a prospecting email or an email about a specific program, provide them with the information that that person needs, which means you need to do some research. And that can be as simple as going to their past history, going to their website to learn a little bit more about their program, checking out the LinkedIn profile of that particular planner and the types of events they planned, all kinds of things. And I talk about research and other posts on my website as well. But do some research about the planner and find out if that piece of information is something that they need at this moment. So again, keeping your email very specific, leaving out the fluff and doing your research before including those fluffy pieces. And my final tip for this video is to forget the hard sell when you're doing an email. Definitely email is still a strong prospecting tool, but bullying a planner into making a decision to use your services is really no way to set the tone for your hopefully long-term relationship. So forget the hard sell, provide value instead. So those are my tips for keeping your emails short and sweet and actionable and hopefully will garner more responses. You can learn more about these tips in greater detail, including some additional tips over at my blog at leoncaldorwood.com. Over there, you can download a tips and tricks sheet for how to attract a meeting planner's attention. So make sure that you check that out. Thanks for joining me today. Good luck with your email communications and we'll see you next time. Bye for now.