You’ve sent a well-considered email to a potential client. Nothing. You follow up a week later, a little sharper this time. Still nothing. So you rewrite it again. Tighter subject line, clearer ask, maybe shorter.
You’re now doubting your ability to write.
Silence is information, stop and listen.
When a message goes unanswered, it’s tempting to treat it as a writing problem. Rework the phrasing, adjust the tone, send it again. But if the same channel has already been tried two or three times without a response, more effort in that channel is unlikely to change the outcome. It’s the same conversation, arriving the same way, to someone who’s already shown you it isn’t landing.
Silence is feedback. It’s just feedback that doesn’t come with an explanation attached. A potential client who isn’t responding to email might be buried in their inbox, might not read email as their primary channel, or might simply need a different kind of interaction to feel comfortable engaging. You don’t know which, and email won’t tell you.
Need a comms channel reset?
Different channels carry different weight, and different expectations. An email asks for someone’s attention on their own time, filtered through however many other unread messages are already sitting there. A phone call asks for their attention right now, and it signals something an email can’t: that this matters enough to reach out directly.
For relationship-driven businesses in particular, a phone call after a couple of unanswered emails often does more than a third, better-written email ever would. It’s not about being more persistent. It’s about recognising that the first channel wasn’t the right fit for this particular relationship, and adjusting to meet the person where they’re more likely to actually respond.
The same logic applies in reverse. Some conversations genuinely are better started by email, particularly when a potential client needs time to think, wants something in writing to reference, or is the type of person who finds a phone call intrusive before a relationship exists. Reading which situation you’re in matters more than defaulting to whichever channel is easiest for you to use.
A conversation that made this click
I was consulting with a client recently who was travelling and using his mobile. He went to share a link and stopped mid-sentence. “I’ll text you the link, wait, I don’t have your cellphone number. It’s not on your email signature either, what’s with that?”
It’s a fair question, and the answer is deliberate. I work with a number of clients across different projects and different times, and I’ve chosen not to put my number on my email signature, because, if possible, I don’t want to be interrupted by a call in the middle of someone else’s work. Email lets people reach me without assuming I’m available the second the message lands. But if we’re actively working on something together and speed genuinely matters, I’m glad to share it. The channel isn’t fixed. It’s chosen, based on what the relationship and the moment actually need.
That small exchange is really the whole idea under a microscope. The right channel isn’t the one that’s most convenient by default. It’s the one that fits the relationship, the urgency, and the person on the other end of it, at that particular time. Sometimes that’s email. Sometimes it’s a slack message, text or voice message. Occasionally, it’s genuinely worth picking up the phone, shock horror!
Watching for the message not landing, not just going unanswered
There’s a second version of this that’s easier to miss. Sometimes you get a response, but it’s clear the message hasn’t actually landed the way you intended. The reply misses the point. The tone feels off. The person seems more confused or more guarded than the conversation warranted.
This is worth pausing on, because the instinct here is often to explain further, in the same way, at greater length. That rarely fixes it. If someone has misread a message, more of the same kind of message usually deepens the misunderstanding rather than resolving it.
A short call, a different format, or simply asking the person directly how they’d prefer to talk something through, tends to reset the conversation faster than trying to write your way out of it.
A practical way to think about it
Before sending the third follow-up in the same channel, it’s worth asking a simpler question: has this channel actually worked, anywhere in this relationship, so far? If it has, persistence is reasonable. If it hasn’t, the channel itself may be the thing to change, not the message.
This isn’t about abandoning email, or defaulting to phone calls for everything. It’s about staying attentive to what’s actually happening, rather than repeating the same approach out of habit because it’s the one that’s easiest to reach for.
Communication that works tends to be the kind that adapts to the person on the other end of it, not the kind that asks the person to adapt to your preferred channel.
Getting communication right across every stage of a client relationship is part of what a Strategic Alignment Engagement looks at. Here’s how that work is scoped.