re: Let's talk Email Etiquette

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Never underestimate the value of using "please" and "thank you"...

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Also, on subject, the use of "please acknowledge" when managing people. I hated it when I'd send out call for action email, then the next week the employee is like, "Oh, I just glanced at that and didn't read the direction."

I started asking at the end of my direction the little phrase, "Please acknowledge your understanding. Thanks." This put the employees I managed under the concept of 'being responsible' instead of just being lazy. Lazy and half-assed is difficult to deal with. Not doing tasks you've acknowledged as required tasks leads to employee going under a PIP, or being in-line for termination if it continues.

My wife has global responsibilities. She has bemoaned the fact that her global team of account managers sucked because they refused to code their opportunities right in Salesforce, making forecasting impossible, which you can't do for a publicly traded company. They were too lazy and not being motivated by their managers.

When she was promoted to the global position over the senior managers she told everyone of them to have their teams fully complying with the Salesforce requirements within 60 days and added to her email, "please acknowledge your understanding."

Every one responded back affirming their commitment except one guy in Singapore who had a problem accepting female authority. He didn't respond at all, and when everyone's Salesforce Opportunity report was available three weeks later, except for all of his account managers, I overheard him saying to my wife in their late night video call that "it was more important for his people to be selling instead of filling out forms online". She told him there was no grey area and expected him to get with a Salesforce administrator and schedule training for himself and his team. Two weeks goes by and he hadn't made any effort to set up his team for training. A week later, when her employer said she needed a head count reduction of two, she excised this cancer out from under her and reassigned his account managers to other senior managers with the direction to bring them up to speed.

Until two months ago, she would be up all night generating these reports by hand. Now, she can generate the needed report in less than a minute.

Agree with saying 'please' and 'thank you', but also it's very important to get people to acknowledge their actions or actionable requirements.

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Until two months ago, she would be up all night generating these reports by hand. Now, she can generate the needed report in less than a minute.

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Nothing says “Salesforce” like having 50 people do an hour of work each to save 4 hours of work for one person.

On the flip note.. I do this later on purpose to buy me a few more hours.. when is respond thanks or whatever, the send assumes I just read it even though I read it yesterday (it just means I’m extremely busy when the fact of the matter is that I’m just lazy sometimes and don’t feel like dealing with it at the moment)

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Nothing says “Salesforce” like having 50 people do an hour of work each to save 4 hours of work for one person.

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. Understand, but if someone wants to be paid commission on a project, they need to go in and code their personal projects. Shouldn't need someone to babysit them and spoon feed processes over and over.

I don’t acknowledge all if I’m just copied on as an FYI, but if someone asks me to do something or sends me something I request, I certainly do, and as quickly as possible.

Also, I’ve got a zero inbox going back almost 2 years with probably close to 50 emails a day. Every job has its own folder with sub folders for just about every facet of that particular job from accounting to equipment and materials. I’ve also got non job related sub folders for everything else that comes across my desk.

Anything that still needs my immediate attention stays in my main inbox until it’s taken care of. Generally this is only a handful of emails and kind of acts like a to do list of sorts.

This sounds ridiculous but when you’re running multiple projects and estimates, this organization helps me a ton.