“How do you put a tag on a picture?“

I was on the phone with one of my tech-challenged friends. He is a willing user of mobile phone and computer technology and it’s not his strong suit. It doesn’t come “naturally” to him.

“I got an email from a friend,” he continued. “She sent some pictures and she wrote notes about each one. I have some pictures I’d like to send back to her and I want to put tags on them to explain them.”

“OK,“ I said. “Do you mean ‘add text to the photos’? Type a few words on each one?”

“Yes,” he said.

“OK,” I replied, “go to your Photos app on your home screen.“

“My home screen? Oh, yeah, OK.” Pause. “OK, I have that.”

“Right, now, choose one of the pictures. Touch a picture.”

And I started through the process of putting a caption on a photo on his iPhone.

“See the three lines with little circles in them at the bottom of the screen? Touch that”

“I don’t see that.”

“Yeah, it’s at the bottom of the screen, roughly in the middle, very small.”

“OK, now what.”

“Look at the top of the screen.”

“Same screen?

“Yeah, same screen And touch the little circle on the right that looks like a pen point…”

“OK… Wait a minute… I can’t find that… OK I found that…”

“Great, now, press that.”

“OK, I touched it and nothing happened.”

And, on we went for 30 minutes: “Try this. I can’t find that. OK, I found it and nothing happened. OK, go back… Where’s that?”

Finally, he erupted, ranting about technology and concluding with, “Let me show you something.“

Facetiming with another device, he showed me the email that he had received from his friend. I saw instantly that she had copied photos from her photo gallery, pasted them into the email, then typed notes under each photo.

A much easier process that we accomplished in about three minutes.

Silly me. If I had just said at the beginning, “Show me her email so I can see what you want to do,” I could have saved us 30 minutes and him 30 points on his blood pressure.

Nick Miller and Clarity train banks and bankers to attract and develop deeper relationships with small businesses. Many more Sales Thoughts like this and a host of other articles and resources at https://clarityadvantage.com/knowledge-center/ .