Adrie's Blog

Call to action


Throughout my life, I have made it a habit to react promptly - be it to questions or opportunities, all matters where you know someone is waiting for a reply. It has served me well over the years, but what never fails to strike me is that there are very few people that have that same sense of urgency.

The ones that do have a sense of urgency, are those that know how valuable the element "time" is - often entrepreneurs, but in some cases also people in large organisations. Those are the ones that really make things happen, and get things done.

I have to admit that the huge amount of information we all get these days, doesn't help in reacting quickly - see Bill Evan's blog "the future of Reading" - the amount of emails, alerts and calls you get these days, is immense.

These past two weeks we had a number of E.Factor Events, Amsterdam and London in particular. It was very interesting to see how many connections were made. People even tweeted, post event, that they had gotten 2 or 3 serious deal out of it. In London the discussion and interaction was so animated that almost everyone there, has sent everyone else messages and emails since the event. A great result and an instant new network.

The above example clearly shows that it has a direct impact to have entrepreneurs meet and talk at events. People seem more willing and open to new contacts and connections. My point here is that if people actually meet, the "call to action" is much greater then if you simply receive an email, or network invitation. But if they then do not have the sense that they have to follow up, touch base again in 24-48 hours, even those connections are not going to work - it is still about making sure that you put in the time to make the connections work.

I often wonder, when I am sitting there waiting for answers, if people simply don't care to answer, don't have time, or try to avoid giving a clear answer. Even if it is "NO" it is still a good answer, because it would free me up to do something else. VCs are a good example of those that string potential investment opportunities along - they know they are not going to invest, but want to find out what others might think of it as they don't want to miss the boat on something that might be big either. The problem for the entrepreneur is, that they may feel the investor is interested, and they keep waiting until their money has run out. I have even had a case myself where an investor, knowing full well that my business was smack bang in the middle of the IT sector - kept me on the hook for 3 months before telling me "We don't do investments in IT"...

The long and short of it is, that we should all just give an honest and quick answer. Be respectful of the fact that that allows the other party to move on, or take appropriate actions. Simply talking a lot but not acting, is a waste of everyone's time. If you promise something, even if it is merely to get back to someone, just DO it.