A recent edition of Marcia Yudkin’s Marketing Minute started me thinking about how we express ourselves.
She had recently received an email message from a vacation rental company, offering her the opportunity to list her condo in Hawaii for free. She read the offer but couldn’t figure out what was in it for the company or even who to contact to ask questions. She deleted the email, and the company lost a potential customer.
I wonder if that company was afflicted with what so many of us are. We want something but are afraid to ask for it. Perhaps we’re afraid of rejection, or perhaps an explicit ask seems impolite. So we‘re diffident. We hope that others will guess what we want and give it to us.
In real life, as in sales, we need to ask for the outcome we want. If we want to continue seeing someone, for example, we need to say so rather than hoping that we’re so nice that the object of our affection will decide to continue. We need to let them know that there’s something worthwhile in it for us as well as for them.
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