The other day, I was speaking with a financial planner and consultant, and she indicated to me that many of her clients merely send her a text message. She then scans her text messages, finds the information which is needed, and then calls them back when she has a ready. She also uses the text messages she receives for her business as a “to do list” and for doing her scheduling. In other words, it’s very similar as to a consumer inside of a deli, or ice cream shop;
“Please take a number and you will be served in the order received.”
About four months ago, I talked to another young lady who is a coach. She has many clients and they are able to contact her by phone so many times per quarter, and send her e-mails, which she will then reply to. It would seem to me that if she used “Text Messages for Scheduling” in a similar way as the financial planner did, it would fit very nicely with her micro-consulting coaching profession.
Taking this one step further, it might also be good for a social networking system such as Google Plus, to allow people to send tweets, or text messages to various industry professionals so they could get advice. Leaders and experts in the industry could offer micro-consulting services using those text messages or tweets – or whatever Google+ decides to call them – in a similar way to schedule whom they will serve in what order.
Now then, whereas someone designing such a system might play around with it a bit to figure out the best combination, I think any micro-consultant, or coach should consider this. First of all the methodology is simple, it works, it’s easy to keep track of just as if you were to write a To Do List. In this case it’s only a modern version of that, and it helps the user stay organized. It also ensures that the people leaving the text messages will get called back on a timely basis.
Further, it offers a lot of freedom because if you are running your micro-consulting business this way you could run your normal errands around town, go to Starbucks, go to lunch, and service your micro-consulting clients as time permitted between activities. Therefore this mobile technology would give you more freedom, which is indeed its purpose. It also puts you in control of your clients, and makes you more efficient in doing so. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.