A powerful lesson in persuasion…
I answered a question about this on Quora and Youtube this morning.
Someone asked how he could resolve a problem with a company, either by writing bad reviews, contacting the Better Business Bureau, or “having action taken”, whatever that means.
These ideas are understandable, but useless, as those of us in business understand.
Instead of taking one of these courses of action, I recommended something much better. And much simpler.
Contacting the company and asking for what you want.
Obviously this first requires knowing what you want.
And before that, it requires calming the fuck down and getting past anger, emotions, and the modern desire to label everything as a “scam.”
Then you simply contact the company, stay calm, present facts only (not sob stories and irrelevant details), and ask for the (reasonable) thing you want.
If you don’t really want anything, your feeling are just hurt, then move on with your life.
If what you want is stupid, like a million dollars or getting some call center dummy fired, move on with your life.
If you want something concrete and reasonable though, ask the business calmly to do that thing.
Almost every time, they’ll give it to you. Or compromise and give you something.
Why?
Because the person you’re talking to doesn’t want a problem either. They want to go about their day and have it go as smoothly as possible.
Make it easy for them to do that AND give you what you want.
Win win is always better than lose lose.
If you’re in business, you know this is true. You’d much rather help the calm, friendly person with a concern than deal with the angry, screaming, insulting, threatening lunatic.
How right or wrong you are isn’t the issue here.
Its a simple matter of persuasion.
— Mark
