TIN 005 - How To Get People To Help You (Without Asking)

There's a reason people don't help you, but there's a simple solution

Hey 👋 - Greg here.

Happy Saturday morning to everyone who is talking to their connections this week.

Here's one tip on how to get your connections to help you, without even asking.

Today's issue takes less than 5 minutes to read.

Imagine yourself in a networking conversation.

• You did all the work to re-connect with a dormant tie.

• You set up the conversation.

• You let your connection talk about themselves.

• You gave you connection advice, ideas, or recommendations.

Then, your connections says: "This has been so great. I enjoy talking with you."

"How can I help you?"

This is what you’ve been waiting for.

This is where all your networking starts to pay off.

Your connection is offering to help you grow your network or find an opportunity.

What will you say?

Don't Be Hard to Help

If you aren't prepared, it's easy to lose this opportunity.

And if you aren't prepared, you're likely going to be hard to help.

If you’re hard to help, people will find reasons not to help you.

Everyone has a lot going on.

If what you ask people to do takes too much time or energy, they won’t get around to it. Not because they don’t want to but because they have other priorities.

What does it look like when you’re hard to help?

Let’s think about applying for a job.

If you ask a connection to take your resume and give it to someone in recruiting, that’s being hard to help.

Your connection has to take your resume, find the recruiter, then hand it to them and tell them to call you.

The recruiter must believe you're someone they should call, and then call you.

There are too many places this could go wrong.

Your connection may print out your resume and leave it on the side of his desk while figuring out who to give it to. He gets busy and your resume gets buried on his desk.

Or he gives it to the recruiter, and he thinks, "That’s it. I've done my job helping my connection."

But, the recruiter doesn’t call you because she is busy, and your resume gets buried in the pile on her desk.

You never get anywhere in the interviewing process because you were too hard to help.

How to Be Easy to Help

If you want to be easy to help, whatever you ask your connection to do for you has to be:

• Specific

• Simple

The more specific and the simpler the ask, the more likely you are to get help.

When your connection asks, "How can I help," give them the answer to one of these questions:

• What is the name of the person you want to meet?

• What is the name of the companies where you want to meet someone?

• What industry do you want to learn more about?

By giving your connection a specific person or list of company names, you’re making it easy for them to help you.

You're doing the thinking for them.

If you say, "Who do you know I should meet?"

You are also making it hard for them. It’s not specific enough. We all know lots of people.

If you tell them the name of a person you want to meet, they can say, “Yes I know that person,” or, “No I don't know them.”

This is risky because they may not know the person or know them well enough to introduce you.

It's ok to do this if you are confident they know the person, but if you don't, go with the Target Company List approach.

What's a Target Company List?

When I talk to people about networking to find a job, I tell them to create a target list of companies.

This is a list of companies you want to learn about to decide if you want to work there or not.

It is an actual document, well-crafted and well-formatted.

It needs to be a physical list you can hand to connections or email to them.

The reason it needs to be a physical list is three-fold.

First, it forces you to get specific and put thoughts to paper. If you don’t write it down, you will stumble on the names of the companies when your connection asks which companies you’re interested in.

Second, when you have a list of companies in front of your connection, you prime her brain and make it easier for her to think of people.

The list of companies cues your connection to flip through her mental Rolodex to think of people she can connect you with.

You’re creating an availability bias in your connection’s brain. Availability bias "is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision."¹

Your target list of companies gives your connection a set of available information, the list of companies, to make it easier for her brain to think about who she knows at those companies.

Your target list narrows down the list of possible people in her brain so that she can focus on a smaller list of people she can introduce you to.

Even if she doesn’t know someone at the companies on your list, it helps her think of other companies to add to your list.

The third reason your list needs to be a physical list is the person can take the list with her, and she is more likely to remember you and remember what you are looking for.

A funny thing will happen when your connection takes the list with her: she will start seeing the companies on your list in her everyday life.

Your list has primed her brain to continue using the availability bias, which makes our brains use the most recent information it has received.

Just like when you buy a new car and start seeing cars just like yours on the road, your connection will start noticing the names of the companies on your list online in news articles, in advertisements, or online job postings.

Of course, like your new car, she would have seen the names of these companies whether she met you or not, but without your target list, she would have ignored the names of these companies when she saw them.

Her brain wouldn’t be primed to notice them.

Instead, the names of the companies on your list are fresh in her brain, and she will continue to look at the names on your list because she took it with her.

When she sees the names of the companies in her daily life, your name will come to her mind; she will let you know about the opportunities she sees, and put you in touch with the people you need to talk to.

Putting your list into the subconsciousness of more people means you have "opportunity scouts" out in the world searching for opportunities for you.

Finally, it’s easier for her to take your target company list with her than it is to take your resume.

Taking your resume implies she has a commitment to give it to someone else.

She feels more pressure to do something with your resume.

Taking your target company list means all she must do is tell you if she sees any opportunities at the companies on your target list.

It’s much easier for her to look for opportunities than to send your resume to someone else, which means you are making it easier for her to help you.

What’s Next?

If someone asked you to give them a list of the companies you want to work for or the clients you want to land, could you hand it to them today?

If not, that's what I'm going to help you create next week.

1. Wikipedia, Availability heuristic, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic