Picture this… You’ve eyed a potential client or mentor or someone who is going to help improve your business. You’ve already established in your mind what you want/need from them and justified to yourself how you think it would also benefit them. You’ve obtained their contact information, be it direct message on social media, or email address, and you’ve composed your eloquent message/email. This is where it gets tricky. You either have one of two techniques*... A. close your eyes and press send, drop your phone like it’s lava and run. Or B. leave the email/message in your drafts for days…maybe weeks…
The question I want to know is, WHY IS PRESSING SEND SO DAMN HARD?!
My train of thought is usually the same. Did I catch all the typos? Did I capture everything? Did I write clearly and effectively? What if they don’t respond? What if they think I’m too aggressive? Or not assertive enough? What if they don’t like me? What if they block my email and put me on a blacklist that will haunt me for the rest of my life and I’ll never get another client/lead again because I used YOUR instead of YOU’RE?!
I’m back.
Having sent more than my share of emails, for all sorts of reasons I have been working to follow the mantra “Live and let live”m and yes that may be a mantra more for animal activist or human rights activists, but I think it’s appropriate here also. So here are my steps to pushing send
Get contact information.
Figure out what you want to say, what are you trying to get from this email?
Write it.
Check for proper grammar and spelling (THIS IS IMPORTANT).
Make sure you add additional contact information in case email/direct messaging isn’t their avenue of choice.
Push send
Once it’s sent, don’t panic. If there was anything missing you can add it in the NEXT email, and if they don’t respond, they’re not the lead you need.
Live and Let Live
*That is not saying there are ONLY two reactions to this scenario, of course there are variations of grey of these two reactions.