Reviews

"Steven Griffith's Email Power coaches you how to respond to any email in a way that maximizes communication, builds profits, and enhances your relationships-every time. A valuable and timely book."

"Steven Griffith has broken the code for e-mail communication and his secrets for success are in this groundbreaking book. Don't press SEND again until you've read it!"
- Allan Pease, Co-author of Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps

"Email Power is the premier book about E-mail. We've all had experiences where we wrote something in E-mail and paid an enormous price because of mis interpretation. Griffith's book is a blueprint for communication success and needs to be on your shelf, now..."
- Kevin Hogan, Psy.D. Author of The Science of Influence, and, The Psychology of Persuasion

"Griffith's book is a treasure of ideas for coping with one our biggest challenges in customer contact centers- emails. There are many practical tips for both interpreting the customer's message and getting the job done in one email exchange. I highly recommend this book for your professional library."

"The ability to effectively communicate in today's work place is an absolute necessity to be successful. Email Power shows you exactly how to do that with clear, concise, practical guidelines that will transform the way you communicate."

"E-mail Power by Steven Griffith is to e-mail correspondence as Emily Post was to etiquette. He has set a new standard on how to succeed in communicating by e-mail and especially how to avoid making costly mistakes. And a great read, too!"

Excerpt

Chapter 1
Understanding the Language of Email

You’ve just returned from a great lunch and are feeling pumped to take on your afternoon’s workload. Sitting down at your computer, you log into the Internet and access your email. Several have come in and the client you want most to hear back from has responded to your morning email. Great! You eagerly open it and instantly freeze, your mouth drops open, your heart stops. Your client is fuming, his anger at you is so great he’s decided to take his account and business elsewhere. You’re in complete shock. Confusion, hurt and anger surge through your body, your stomach now in threatening turmoil. You can’t believe this has happened. Your first impulse to tell him off, to write him a spiteful note back is incredibly strong. But then you remember the last time you had a knee-jerk reaction, the wind goes out of your sails. Nothing feels worse than email regret, when you wish you had an “unsend” button. What do you do now? How can you recover this situation? Now’s the time you wish someone had written an all-encompassing email communication manual.

In everyday occurrences the world over, an estimate 31 billion email messages are transacted every day and these numbers are expected to rise to 60 billion in 2006 (IDC, World Wide Email Usage study). In the U.S., 130 million employees send approximately 2.8 billion email messages daily. U.S. corporations receive approximately 50 million in-bound customer emails every day. In a recent survey conducted by the American Management Association, it was reported the 65% of employees polled spent up to two hours a day emailing. A full 10% spent more than four hours per day emailing. Some research suggests that 80% of business communication is now handled via email. The question becomes: How much damage is being done in these communications? How many deals are being lost? How many people are getting insulted, hurt, it angered to the point that they are no longer motivated or engaged? How many relationships have gone sour without an understanding of why?

These and many other questions are what prompted the research, training program, development, and the ultimate writing of this book. My clients, friends, and associates kept running into the same problem. It seemed that there was a critical communication issue no one had ever been able to address. With my 15 years of expertise in communication coaching, the writer of the email had no idea the affect their words had on others. And when they got a response they were not expecting, they would respond exactly as they should not, making the problem exponentially worse. As I continue coaching people, I realize that if they had a system to understand the incoming email, as well as the person who wrote it, they could respond in a way that would create a favorable outcome. Over time, I created seminars, workshops, and a training company in these new methods. The results were phenomenal. I discovered I’d come up with a system that could help businesses and people to communicate better in their everyday live, Email Power: How to get what you want from every email you send.

The new trend in instant messaging (IM) and text messaging within organizations is growing rapidly as well. Email has replaced how we once conducted business either face to face or via telephone. With email and instant messaging, the signaling cues of a normal face-to-face exchange are absent: eye contact, vocal cues, and body language are gone. And there is no feedback loop or way to adjust as communications develop.