If you know me, you know the thing I hate above all else is unresponsiveness. Tell me “no.” Tell me you’ll get back to me. Tell me to ask you next month. Just don’t ignore me.
Yet if you were to question folks who don’t reply, I bet they wouldn’t cop to their shortcoming. They’d say, “I was going to.” Or: “I’ve been crazy busy.” Or: “I’m waiting on someone else.” Excuses. Excuses.
Or are they?
To ascertain if people are just bullshitting, I’d love to conduct a little experiment. What if the next time you contacted Unresponsive Ursula, you didn’t make a request, but instead offered a benefit? For example: “I have a client who would be perfect for you. Any interest?” I suspect she’d respond.
This is the exact trick Andrew Carnegie pulled when his sister in law complained that her sons wouldn’t respond to her letters. What did Carnegie do? He sent his nephews his own letters, in which he mentioned, in a postscript, that he had enclosed a five-dollar bill. Yet when the boys opened the envelopes, the money was missing. They immediately wrote back, and inquired about their greenbacks.
The moral of the story? Nobody ever went wrong underestimating another person’s selfishness.
Note: I’m not actually going to do this. But it sure would be fun — and no doubt revealing.
