Why I Still Believe in the Phone (And What a £20M Founder Said That Proved It)

I was on a proposal call few weeks ago with the founder of a telecoms distribution business. £20M+ in revenue, built over decades. Sharp operator. Knows his market inside out.

We were about twenty minutes into talking about how his team could grow the B2B side of the business when he said something that stopped me.

“Young people can’t seem to talk on the phone anymore. But it’s the only real way to build relationships.”

He wasn’t complaining. He was diagnosing. And he was right.

His co-founder jumped in. They’d been talking about this internally for months. They’ve had salespeople come and go. Good people, not bad hires. But every time someone left, the customer relationships went with them. Nobody followed up. Nobody checked in. The accounts just went quiet until someone else eventually picked them up, if they picked them up at all.

And the people who stayed? They were doing the same thing most sales teams do. Sending emails. Sending quotes. Waiting for the phone to ring.

Not because they were lazy. Because calling feels risky. Email feels safe.

I’ve sat in enough of these conversations to know the pattern. The founder sees the problem clearly. The team knows it too. But nobody does anything about it because the alternative, picking up the phone and risking silence on the other end, feels worse than doing nothing.

Here’s the thing I’ve learned from working with companies on this exact issue: the fear isn’t about the phone. It’s about the response. Or the lack of one.

Your salesperson calls a customer. No answer. They feel like they’ve failed. They tried, right? Nobody picked up. So they mark it off and send an email instead.

But they called the wrong number. Or they called at the wrong time. Or they left a voicemail that sounded like every other voicemail from every other vendor. And then they gave up.

I worked with a healthcare clinic earlier this year that had this exact problem. They had appointment slots to fill, staff with the time and skill to help patients, and a booking system that was half empty. The team was sending text reminders and follow-up emails. Sensible. Professional. And completely ignored.

When I dug into what was happening, the answer was almost funny.

The clinicians and receptionists were calling patients on their mobiles, but they were calling from the clinic’s landline. And most people don’t pick up calls from numbers they don’t recognise these days. Especially landlines.

So the calls were going unanswered. Not because people didn’t want to talk. Because they saw an unknown number and ignored it.

We changed one thing. Call from a mobile phone instead of the clinic landline. If they don’t answer, leave a personal voicemail. Not a script. A real, human, 30-second message. Then follow up immediately with a text.

“Hi, it’s Rebecca from Dr. Williams’ practice. Just calling to check in after your last visit. Dr. Williams wanted to see if all is well with you and your recovery is on track. . Speak soon.”

Then the text: “Hi, this is Rebecca from Dr. Williams’ practice. Just left you a voicemail. Would Tuesday at 2pm or Thursday at 6pm work for a quick call to learn more about how you are recovering from xxxx?”

The response rate went from 22% to 67%.

Same patients. Same clinic. Same team. They just changed the channel and made it personal.

Now, here’s what the founder on my call last week wouldn’t have known yet, because we haven’t started working together. But I knew it the moment he described his team’s behaviour. The phone problem and the growth problem are the same problem.

His team has products their customers don’t know about. He admitted that openly. “Our existing customers aren’t being looked after as well as they could be.” His co-founder said they have “lots of products that potentially we could offer our customers.” But nobody is having those conversations.

Not because the products aren’t good. Not because the customers wouldn’t want them. Because the only way to have that conversation is on the phone, or face to face, or through a voice note on WhatsApp. And nobody is doing that because it feels uncomfortable.

This is the bit that I find endlessly fascinating about sales. The gap between what a company sells and what its customers know about is almost always a communication gap. Not a product gap. Not a marketing gap. A willingness-to-pick-up-the-phone gap.

In Europe and Asia, where I do a lot of my work, WhatsApp voice notes have become the modern equivalent of the voicemail. Your customer is on WhatsApp all day. A voicemail on your mobile may sit unheard for days. A voice note gets opened within minutes. Same principle. More relevant channel.

Either way, the point isn’t the technology. It’s the intention behind it. A personal voice message, whether it’s a voicemail or a WhatsApp note, says something that email never will: I thought about you specifically, and I picked up the phone to tell you.

That’s the whole game. That’s what the founder on my call was really saying. Relationships are built through voice. Through conversation. Through the willingness to be present with another person in real time, even if it’s just for 30 seconds on a recording.

His co-founder made a point that stuck with me too. He said most sales training only works for “the top 1% who have the knack.” Everyone else sits through the workshop, feels inspired for a day, and goes back to email by Monday.

He’s right. And that’s the trap. Most sales training teaches technique. But technique without habit is just a memory that fades. What you actually need is a system that makes the phone call the default, not the exception. Where logging the call, tracking the response, and following up becomes as automatic as checking your inbox in the morning.

That’s what I build with companies. Not a training day. A culture. Weekly tracking. Visible accountability. A set of simple questions that anyone in the business can ask. Not just the sales team. The ops people. The account managers. The project leads. Anyone who talks to a customer.

“Did you know we also handle endpoint security?” “What are you currently buying from someone else that we could help with?” “Who else at your company buys what you buy?”

These aren’t clever techniques. They’re obvious questions that nobody asks because nobody built the habit.

The founder I spoke with last week hasn’t signed up yet. He’s taking it to his board, doing the numbers, running through the costs with his finance director. That’s exactly what a smart operator does.

But here’s what I noticed during the call. About forty minutes in, he stopped asking me questions and started answering his own. “Why don’t I ask those DYK questions? It seems ridiculous we haven’t been asking.” His co-founder was nodding. They were selling each other on it.

That’s what happens when the solution is simple enough for everyone. It stops being a pitch and starts being a realisation.

The phone isn’t dead. Your team just needs a reason to use it. And a system that makes sure they keep using it long after the initial enthusiasm fades.

If that resonates, reply to this email. I’ll tell you exactly how the system works and what the first 90 days look like. No pitch deck. Just a conversation.