Rick Ross on Business, Software and Life

Email - When the Line Goes Dead

In his Harvard Business Review blog post, "How to Handle Silence, the Worst Kind of Feedback", Peter Bregman tackles the common, yet difficult to deal with, problem of communications that go silent.

He suggests that after two unanswered communications, you "reach out one more time" with the message, "I don't mean to hound you — but I figured I'd reach out one more time. Please let me know if you are able to discuss this further. If I don't hear from you, I'll assume you're not interested."

While the solution he proposes is reasonable, there's a special case that requires further consideration - email. That's because we often can't be reasonably sure that the intended recipient is receiving our emails, even if they have in the past.

Here are a few of the possibilities:

• Even some of the most organized people have allowed their inbox to grow out of control. They may regularly miss messages they consider important.
• Procrastination - your emails have been placed in an "answer later" folder.
• Your address book contains an outdated or infrequently checked address.
• After a recent update, your SPAM filter no longer considers responses from your recipient "worthy" and discards them.

Who knows how many avoidable misunderstandings have resulted from emails not getting through or inadvertently not getting read.

The Solution

Never let a conversation end on an unanswered email. If you're about to "reach out one more time" and the previous attempts at communication were via email, call the person. Let them know that you're calling because you're not sure if they've received your emails.

I've appreciated this additional courtesy on those rare occasions where I've unintentionally failed to respond.

Contract, reports, invoices and documents: how to email anything to anyone

Most business computers are full of valuable information. Contracts, accounting information and industry specific reports are just a few examples. But what happens when you want to share this information with others, maybe your accountant, your attorney, a customer or a client?

Something as simple as sending a Word document can result in frustration because of incompatible versions. And forget trying to send your accountant a report from an older version of QuickBooks!

After reading the next few paragraphs, you’ll know how to email anything that you can print. The software to do it is free. It’s provided by a company that just wants to get their other products noticed.

Before we get to the specifics, we have to answer the question, “what kind of file can anyone read?” The answer is a PDF, or “portable document file “. Almost every computer, regardless of age or operating system already has a program called “Adobe Acrobat Reader” installed on it. This program allows it to open PDF files for viewing or printing.

1. Go to www.CutePDF.com
2. Look for “PDF Creation” section at the top of the page, and click on the “Free Download” link located just under the information for the CutePDF Writer
3. After you’ve downloaded the installation file, run it and follow the simple instructions.

Once CutePDF is installed, it’s easy to use. Next time you print something that you want to share, click “Print” as you would normally do. As the print options dialog appears, you’ll notice that there’s a new “Printer” in your list of printers called CutePDF. Select it instead of your regular printer and click OK.

Instead of printing the file, CutePDF turns it into a PDF and asks you where you want to save it! As soon as the files been saved, you can drag it to your favorite Email Client (MS Outlook for example) and send the file as an attachment. You can do this with full confidence that your recipient will be able to open and view the file with the proper formatting.

Your web browser's most useful key?

When browsing the web, the most useful keyboard key may surprisingly be the space bar. On most web sites and in most web browsers, pressing it scrolls the page. You’ll find it’s much more convenient than pointing your mouse and clicking the narrow scroll bar.

Try it the next time you’re reading the news, product reviews or your favorite blog.