Asking for Help

I wanted to share with you this great story from a meeting of the Chicago chapter. It's a perfect example of how we can create a community of support even with people we don't know and who we imagine don't care.

A young man works in a new job as a recruiter and is a very dynamic, "type A" go-getter. He is on the phone for 8 full hours a day. His bosses recently gave him feedback that "You're doing great, but you need to talk smoother on the phone." Essentially, "You need to not stutter." 

How do you respond to this? 

Steve, who is an experienced, high-powered sales executive, said he had a similar experience to this when he first started working and he was required to cold call all day. It was not going well and he stuttered a lot. He said his boss took him aside and said, "Okay, I know you stutter. When you call, you need to do this. You need to ask people for help."  

At this point in Steve's story, we all said, "...What?" He continued. "I couldn't believe what he was telling me. He said, "When you call people, you should say, 'My name is Steve. Can you help me?' And then stop talking until they respond. When they say 'Yes', say, 'I stutter. I want to talk to you and I just want you to know that it's not because I'm reading off a card or because I'm nervous. I just stutter is all.' And then continue with the pitch." 

"I was so mad after that conversation, I thought it was nuts. But I did what he told me. I hadn't made a single sale to that date. And what made me even madder was the first call I made using that strategy, I made my first sale."  

He now does this all the time and said it works incredibly well. As our meeting progressed, a theme that came out was "everybody struggles with something." Steve's strategy is so powerful because it reminds us that we have commonality as humans with struggles, whether it's stuttering or something else. It's advertising, but advertising in a particularly vulnerable, connective way.