Please welcome back guest blogger, David Brensilber, Senior Vice President, Business Development for Beyond.com.
I came across a video snippet (see below) in which Mary Abbajay spoke about how you can cash in on your Favor Bank. Her thoughts could be summarized in the following six points:
- You have to Give to Get
- Be Realistic in Your Requested Favor
- Be Specific in Your Request
- Be Considerate
- Don’t Abuse a Person
- Be Thankful Regardless of the Results
My interpretation of what she is saying is first, when asking a person for a favor, you should always be thankful and considerate of the person’s time and effort. This should be your approach in most things in life. The harder you make it for the person you are requesting a favor the less likely he or she will do it.
For example, if you want a friend to forward your resume to their contacts, you should try to be clear in your request to them as opposed to being vague and difficult. You should avoid requesting a generic help from a friend since the friend would then have to figure out how he or she can help you. A better way is to say that you would like them to forward a resume to the appropriate people that they feel could help you in your desired field.
The second takeaway is that you should try to ask for favors from people you have already performed favors for. It is easier to get someone to do something for you if they feel indebted to you. People may feel more reluctant to do you a favor if there is no benefit in it for them. In our day and age, people are asked to do a whole bunch of things for others all the time so think how you can convince a friend or associate to help you out.
Thirdly, you need to understand the favor that you are requesting. If you are asking someone to send an email that is one thing. But if you are asking them to spend hours in order to help your job search that is quite another. It is doubtful that you have too many friends or associates who would be excited about spending hours helping you. A smaller favor that takes 15 minutes is more likely to be granted than one that takes 2 hours. If you request large favors several times then you are asking too much. By abusing your friends and associate, you will destroy all of the goodwill that you accumulated with them. You really need to considerate of the help you are asking for.
My recommendation is to treat favors like you treat networking. You should build up your favors and network before you need to use them. When the timing is right you can ask a friend or associated for a favor and if you do it the right way, they will be more than happy to repay the favor.
