Real business is done on WhatsApp

Reading all your messages, nope, me neither?

The reality of business right now is all the comms channels going on. All the IT policies. All the formal RFPs. Procurement review processes. IT gatekeepers. Final bosses guarding every inbox. Email is wild, open rates are a far cry from a few years ago, and the rise of Agentic inbox tools makes things even more complex. LinkedIn DMs are full of AI slop and pitch-slapping. Slack is getting noisier. Teams channels are all over the place. Apple call screening is here to stay. Everyone’s hybrid or remote, and the water cooler chat is long gone.

But there’s one little corner where I’d bet 99% of messages get opened and read, the formalities drop, and the real chat happens. Yep. You guessed it. WhatsApp.

I can feel the wrath of the Enterprise CISOs from here. It’s a BYOD mess, I know. But business on WhatsApp is happening, and I reckon it’s happening more as time goes on.

Dark BD

Back in 2012, a journalist called Alexis Madrigal coined the term “dark social” – the idea that a huge chunk of your marketing journey happens where you’re not in the room, because people are talking about your brand somewhere you can’t see it.

If I was a business consultant w@nker, I’d call the BD version of this “Dark BD.”

So let’s call it that.

But the thing about Dark BD is you are in the room, its just ‘off official channels.’ I’m seeing a real shift in how conversations happen, especially with busy senior people – away from email, away even from Teams, and onto WhatsApp. There’s more than a couple of people I deal with, client-side and supplier-side, where our route one channel is WhatsApp, either text or straight voice notes.

As an agency we’ve got two international clients with peeps spread across time zones where WhatsApp groups and campaign sub-chats are how we stay in touch day to day. It works well and we’re getting campaigns up and out with minimal friction but with enough client oversight. 

The good and the bad

There’s a data infosec argument to be made here. How does this square vs Data processes agreements? Arranging a prospect meeting is one thing, but what about campign conversations? And financial data? At an SME level, a company policy is a sensible minimum. At the enterprise level? That’s way above my pay grade. I’m not a data protection expert and this isn’t a policy recommendation, just an honest look at how BD is actually happening on the ground.

But what’s the reality from a BD point of view?

The good: everything gets read. Everything gets opened. It’s rare that something sits there unanswered. And it’s low friction – we can all do it from our phones, on the move, trains, planes, airport lounges, the sofa, wherever.

The bad: It’s yet another channel and with that it carries risk. A big one personally is boundary encroachment. I’ve had to get properly disciplined about this. It’s hard in the founder seat, because I want to be responsive to clients – but that also means yet another way to get interrupted, even at weekends, which is not good for anyone’s head.

The other tricky bit is that WhatsApp is also where I chat to all my mates. That connection matters to me, and I don’t want work bleeding into it until there’s no line left at all. On the flip side, I’ve finally managed to train my mum off email – she knows I’ll read it eventually, but WhatsApp is the only way to actually get hold of me.

So what’s the point?

You’ve got to go with the flow on this one. It isn’t going away. But none of that means diving in blind – it means being deliberate about it.

I’m not talking about cold WhatsApp, and I’m certainly not getting on board with the sales bros doing cold WhatsApp video calls – that’s a hard no from me. But there’s a strong argument, especially if you’re an SME, for moving the relationship-building conversation across to WhatsApp early, on your own terms.

And if you’re not doing it, someone else is. You could be the one missing out.