Phone Calls Aren’t Dead: How to Make Them Work for You 📱

Now that we've covered a little bit on text messaging, let's talk a little bit about phone calls.

You're going to want to have a cell phone plan.

First things first, not everybody answers their phone anymore, and that's OK.

So if you make a phone call and the person doesn't answer, don't panic.

Don't take it personally.

Just know that that's extremely common these days.

If you want to leave a short voicemail, that's a confident, good thing to do.

So have a little bit of a message prepared.

Hey, what's up?

It's Jason just reaching out, looking forward to talking to you soon.

Later, right?

Nothing over the top, nothing complicated.

Don't overthink it.

If you want to jot down a sentence and just have it in front of you, that's helpful at first.

A fine way to practice.

Question.

Would you like to go out on a date?

Uh, no.

OK, that's not helping.

If they do answer the phone, it's also good to have a little bit of a plan.

Here are four simple steps that you can follow.

Step one, open.

Step two, is interesting.

Step three, convey interest.

And step four, close.

For step one, open.

Don't overthink it.

It's the same as any normal phone conversation would start.

Hey, what's up?

How are you doing?

Something like that.

Yo, pick up the phone.

What's up?

What's up?

Just a normal, standard phone hello introduction.

After that, we move right into step two, be interesting.

And there are a few different ways that you can fulfill this step.

The first way that you might do it is by sharing an interesting story from your day or something that happened to you recently.

It can just be a one, two-minute tale.

It doesn't have to be anything complicated or anything long.

Just a quick little snippet that they might find intriguing or interesting.

If you don't have a story from your day, that's OK.

There are a couple of other good ways to be interesting as well.

The second way that you might do it is by having a quick conversation on a topic that you know they're interested in.

So for example, if in your first meet up you knew that you had a shared interest in something like astrology-- Oh my god. --or they like a certain sports team, you can use that as your topic and just have a quick conversation on that subject matter.

And if you're not the kind of person who knows much about the topic, so if you don't know about astrology or you're not a fan of that team, you can just do a little bit of research.

Do a quick Google search, see what's in the news, and there you go.

You have something interesting to talk about on a subject matter that you know they'd be interested in.

Yet a third way to be interesting would be to talk about something exciting that's on the horizon.

So if you're about to see a cool piece of entertainment or you have a really fun plan for dinner or something special, you can talk about that.

And by the way, if you're unsure about the types of things that would be an interesting thing on the horizon, don't worry.

We're going to go over those types of things a little bit later on in this very course in great detail.

This brings us to step three, conveying interest.

Hey, enough about us, right?

We got to talk a little bit about them.

Ask them how they're doing, or you can be more specific.

How's the family?

How's the job?

How's the whatever?

But it's always a very polite, pleasant, and valuable thing to do to convey a little bit of interest in the other person's life.

Let them have a chance to open up and deepen the relationship a little bit by sharing a bit about themselves.

After that's over, we can move on to step four, close.

Now, with every phone call, you're going to want to have a purpose for the phone call.

Don't just call randomly and not know why you're calling or what you're calling for.

Have a reason that you're calling.

And there are two main reasons that you'll make a phone call to somebody.

The number one most common important reason would be, you're just hanging out with them again in the future.

And this is, once again, a bridge from the last time you spent time together, face-to-face time together, to the next time that you're going to spend that face-to-face time together.

Now, if in step two, the interesting step, you chose the route of talking about some interesting plans that you had on the horizon, you can go back to that and make those plans what you invite them along to.

Oh, hey, remember I was talking about how I was going to go to that awesome comedy show?

You should come with me if you're free.

So if you're doing that, that's using a technique called seating.

We seated it earlier in the conversation.

We talked about the fun, exciting things we were going to do.

We didn't invite them at that moment.

We changed topics, and talked about some other stuff.

But now that we're at the close, we are closing that seat.

We are inviting them to join with us on that plan.

If you didn't use that one as part of your be an interesting step, but rather you just told an interesting story about your day or discussed an interesting topic that you thought that they would be interested in talking about, that's cool.

You can still, at this point of the conversation, at the close, bring something up now and invite them to join you on it.

This is just a really good thing to do to make sure that you have plans going into the future with this person because phone calls are great.

They can keep you connected, but nothing beats face-to-face time for a good, real emotional connection.

Maybe the reason that you're calling isn't to hang out again.

For example, if it's a long-distance situation or if there are just some circumstances that would be holding the two of you from getting back shortly, then you might just be making that phone call as a way to keep your connection strong, to make sure that relationship is continuing to grow.

And if that's the case, just include that in your closing sentiment.

Hey, it was great getting a chance to talk to you on the phone.

I love staying connected with you.

Let's talk again soon.

That would be an example of a close if that was the intention of your conversation.

So that is a strategy for a phone call and to just make one final point, if they aren't the type of person to ever use the phone, you can adopt this very same strategy for text messaging.

Again, the main reason for texting is logistics.

We're just moving forward, hey, what's the next place we're gonna be hanging out in, when, where, that kind of thing, but it's not the only use for text messaging.

If you wanna use this four-step strategy for texting to deepen your connection and make plans, open, be interesting, convey interest, and close, you can do this over text message as well...

Cheers,
Alex

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