When To Return the Phone Call

Several years ago, we discussed tips about when to return phone calls. With so many of us choosing to communicate with text or email instead of voice, these tips might be even more important now.

You’re picking up voice mail, and there’s a message from a salesperson asking you to call them back. And you’ve heard highly successful people say you should return every phone call. It’s the classy thing to do. It’s karma.

But will you? Should you?

My advice is yes, most of the time. But there’s room for discretion.

1. Always return calls to people you know. If you’ve met them in person, by phone or virtually, assume relevance and call them back.

2. However, if you give them the benefit of the doubt and their call ends up being completely self-serving or not respectful of your time, they lose the privilege of a call back for future messages.

3. Similarly, if one valid call results in a series of calls that aren’t of value to you, you’re fine cutting them off.

4. Finally, don’t return calls from people you don’t know, unless they clearly state their purpose and it’s relevant to you.

That’s my 2 cents. How do you see it?