What to Do When They Don’t Answer

It’s 3:35pm. You look down at your phone to see a text from Cassie. The two of you have been texting back and forth for two days now. You’ve managed to create a solid connection through messaging. You can tell that Cassie is interested, she’s responding quickly to your messages and her responses are detailed. Reading the First Call section of the Continued Connection made you aware that now is the time to call.

Your throat clenches for a second. You begin to clean your room as you dial Cassie’s number for the first time. Each ring seems to drag on for a minute. After 4 rings of wishing she doesn’t pick up the phone, you’re met with Cassie’s voice mail.

“What’s Next?”

I personally hate phone conversations. I stuck to texting for a long time with the full intention that I was going to learn how to get dates without talking on the phone.

Although my “text – date” method was ineffective, I learned a valuable lesson. Calling at the right time is key to continuing connections. I started to call every connection that I had, but I noticed that often times the other person wouldn’t pick up the phone the first time that I called.

4 Rings and an Answering Machine Later

Although it’s necessary for you to pick up the phone and call, It isn’t necessary for the other person to pick up your phone call.

In these instances, leaving a voicemail is the only option. You want to give yourself the highest chance for success. I believe it’s important to remove any potential issue and cover as many bases as possible. This means that when the other person doesn’t answer the phone, you should always leave a voicemail.

Depending on your personality, the voice mail can be coy, funny, intriguing, or just encourage the other person to call you back. I keep my voicemails fairly basic and to the point.

I let the other person know who it is calling, and tell them to give me a shout back.

Brian: Hey Cassie! It’s Brian Mark, give me a shout back at **********

I have a playful personality, and I allow it to shine in my electronic communication. There are times when I’m in a really good mood, or I feel like messing around, and I pull out the Cam Adair voicemail.

Brian: Hey Cassie! The craziest thing just happened! I was walking..

Then I hang up the phone. This is funny because they’ll be listening to the voicemail, and be wondering what it was that happened. I found that this type of voicemail gets an extremely positive response. People can sense when you’re not being authentic, so you actually have to be in a good mood when you do this.

Know that leaving a voicemail is the only option. Keep the voicemails as basic as possible. The longer the message, the less likely someone is going to take the time to listen to it all and give you a call back. The voicemail you leave should be simple, to the point, and encourage the other person to call you back.

The Wait Begins!

Once you’ve left the voicemail, it’s up to the other person to hit you back. Communication is similar to a game of tennis. You hit a ball into their court, and they hit it back to yours.

Most of the time.

As long as you call when the other person’s investment levels are high, the chances of them answering the phone are good. Calling the other person to be met with no response isn’t necessarily a bad thing; they may be busy, in a meeting, or at work. Once you leave the voicemail, you hit the tennis ball into their court.

It’s their turn to hit it back into yours.

There are instances where you won’t receive a response within the next day. In those scenarios, call them the next day. Your call should never bring up the fact that they didn’t call you back. The call should be a friendly call just to say what’s up and talk about your day. Never draw attention to the fact that they are not communicating with you. Drawing attention to it will bring more of that behavior.

The key is to keep the flow of the conversation going with a light – hearted attitude.

The Voice Mail

Leaving a voice mail will drastically increase your chances of success when it comes to getting calls back. You will be met with a call back most of the time, but on the rare occasions where they don’t call you back it’s up to you to send a text the next day.

Patience is a virtue in electronic communication. Have faith that the other person will contact you, and give it the right amount of time.