Alternative Saying for "Lets touch base"

[Grizzly]

I work as a salesman and I find myself endlessly repeating the same office jargon and I cant find any other alternatives to the sayings used since the 80's :irked:

For example.

I'm working with a client to try and sell them a big project with lots of estimates and contracts.
Ive sent him just about everything I can, and want to setup a phone call to talk about them.

So:
I send an email like........

Hey Dan,
Just wanted to touch base with you and see if you were available to sit down and talk about the proposals so far and what the next steps would be.

I literally send out about 30 of these emails a day, and its starting to drive me nuts. What else can i say?

Alternatives:
- Check In
- Make contact
- Quickly chat
- ????????

[Serket]

"I wanted to following up on..."

"A simple curtesy email in regards to..."

Using the words just/merely/only is bad business practice. It means you are automatically assuming an inferior position relative to the recipient, by indicating that your contact is not a prime concern. You want to exude confidence, use confident grammar!

EG:

Dear Dan,

It has been a while since we were in contact (if you feel the need to be more familiar insert "hope all is well with you" in here). Now that you have had some time to peruse the materials I provided you with, I wanted to follow up to see when we can talk about blah blah. I'd appreciate it if you could contact me in the next few days to arrange a suitable time for a meeting/teleconference.

Regards,

Insert-name-here

[Chisos]

Boy, I take my hat off to you for being in sales! That is one of the hardest things for me to do.

Anyway, one thought is to personalize your followup with something that you discussed with this person in your last contact. Or something that is of great interest to them. (I realize that this can be challenging to gather that info on each contact, etc.)

So, start it off by a personal question about "How "X went?"

Then, "Would you be available on "1" or "2" for us to visit further about "Z." and then continue with your spiel about what you are doing.

[Motor Jax]

"Just wanted to make sure you weren't in a car accident. How did the colonoscopy go? I sure hope you are feeling better. By the way, I want to talk to you about <said product> and was wondering if Wednesday about 4:30 am-ish is fine with you."

[INTJoe]

"Let's touch eachothers genitals."

[Grizzly]

"Let's touch eachothers genitals."

Its gay, b8lls are touching....


Pretty much the same response I got from asking around in the RL......


its not so much the conversational structure or method that I'm interested in but the actual pieces used in the sentence.

"lets touch base" being one of the thousands of boiler plate sayings we use everyday,

"hows it going"
"hows it hangin"
"where you been"
"catch you later"
"dont touch me there"
"whats new?"

those kinds of basic conversational sayings we all use as the grease in daily interaction.

I'm in a sales job selling services that take 6-12 months to render in most cases, so I have to get quite friendly with my clients (not "friendly" friendly). so keeping correspondence light is helpful.

Its important to be task orientated and follow the meeting agenda, but the first 3-5 minutes is the BS time. Chat briefly about the weather, what their kids are up to, that kind of stuff.
Neither of us are really listening to this, its just the personal junk to make each other appear we're interested.

Thats where the"touch base" comment comes in. Its "I need to talk to you about something, but nothings wrong, I just need to confirm some things"

" Even if you weren't my client, we would still be friends" :rolleyes: