Provide Cut-And-Paste Worthy Copy To Secure A Favour
Who you know often matters as much, if not more than, what you know. To that end, Harvard Business Blog offers some tips on how to secure a professional contact from someone not familiar with your stellar professional skills.
Photo by kat m research.
Harvard Business Blog’s David Silverman cited a letter he received asking for some professional contacts. According to David, the letter failed to follow some important protocols. Included among them is the need to give the person you’re addressing something to copy, paste and forward on to the contact in question. This requires writing something more substantive than, say, “I appreciate any help or introduction you can make.” The post suggests the following fleshed out template (which should be filled with information relevant your work) before incorporating the above line:
If it helps open a dialogue, my company offers specialised licensing programs for global consumer goods companies. We’ve developed techniques for growing brand awareness and sales, and do it in a very cost-effective way. For example, a program we did for Starfish Foods grew their sales by 18%.
Making contacts and inroads with new colleagues can be difficult terrain to navigate, but a well written, well worded letter or email can make all the difference. (Ed. note: Don’t make the person you’re contacting feel like they have to work to understand what you do and why you’re contacting them, and really personalise your message (beyond mail merge) if you really want anyone to pay attention. Browse the full post for other ways on how to curry favour from a professional contact you barely know, and feel free to offer your own methods in the comments.
How to Ask a (Near) Stranger for a Favor [Harvard Business Blog]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
Better than asking the recipient to cut and paste, make sure the whole email is forwardable. Do that by not including personal touches in the email but include them in a separate email preceding this one. For example:
"Hey Jo, Hows life? How are the kids? By the way I was wondering if you still know Frank Jones. I need to get in touch with him and I was wondering if you could introduce me. I will send you a follow up email that you might be willing to forward. Also when are you going to return my car that you borrowed 10 years ago? Anyway happy travels and til we meet again"
and then a second one:
Dear Jo,
As you know my business XXX is doing YYY and has had much success in ZZZ. If possible, I would greatly appreciate an introduction to Mr. Johnson of ABC. I think you would agree that we might have a proposition of interest to him.
Best Regards,
Bill
Pito Salas
@dsh: Well, it wasn't called "The Cold War" for nothing!
ba-dump-tsshhh!!
TheOtherHalf
@BnWRainbow: We've apparently got at least three very important inroads to Antarctica.
@BnWRainbow: That map was made in 1984
TheOtherHalf
What's wrong with Russia ? I mean look at your map. Is it forbidden for US citizens to keep professional contacts with Russian people ?
But this then makes communications, normal communications, a form of spam that I don't think I'm comfortable with.
Or maybe I'm missing something else here.
whiskey
@orlo: now THAT makes sense
osnofla
I think people should cut out copying pasted cut-and-paste-worthy copy
orlo
@karmaghost: I agree, I could not gather the theme of the post from the title. Is is about a program to copy-and-paste? I was sure it was, but the business thing was a surprise.
Paul Little
This headline made my head a splode.