Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 30 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Persistence is polite
— From this blog post that will (soon) appear in the book Your Music and People by Derek Sivers
In yesterday’s post, we read about Dave Kerpen’s incredible story of determination. I received many great emails about this, and while most of you were in awe and somewhat encouraged by the story, there was still a little shadow of a doubt lingering as to whether such persistence would be perceived as rude.
I don’t think so. As long as you do it in a charming and polite way, always emphasizing that you are looking to add value to the person and his/her business, I think you will be fine. Just as Kerpen was.
Want further proof? Let’s take a look at what one of my favorite entrepreneurs says about persistence.
Derek Sivers is an entrepreneurial guru that I greatly admire and respect. You can read the ideas that I’ve highlighted from his book, Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur, in these posts: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (don’t miss post #5 for a good laugh from a very creative approach to customer service).
Since Sivers is a genius who has the gift of brevity and conciseness, here’s his entire piece, verbatim, on why persistence is polite:
As teenagers, we learned the hard way that if you contact someone and they don’t reply, they’re just not into you. If you keep trying, you must be a total loser.
But in the business world, it’s the opposite. If you don’t keep trying, you’re a loser!
If someone doesn’t get back to you, it probably wasn’t intentional. Everyone is busy, and their situation has nothing to do with you.
Imagine two different scenarios:
1. Someone doesn’t reply, so you get upset and decide they’re evil and clearly meant to insult you. You resent them for life, and speak poorly of them forever.
2. Someone doesn’t reply, so you assume they must be swamped in work. You wait a week, and contact them again. If still no reply, you feel sympathy that they must be really overwhelmed. You wait a week, and try again. If still no reply, you try to reach them a different way.
Now, which one was rude, and which one was polite?
There you have it. It’s simply a mind shift.
Need more? Here’s Sivers in a quick video interview (3:36 min) talking about a story of persistence and politeness. (Note: at the 1:58 min mark approx. there is one phrase—lasting 2 seconds—with strong language.)
Give yourself the gift of being persistent beyond what you ever imagine you could be. You never know what wonderful opportunities will present themselves based on your polite and charming persistence. Try out polite persistence as an experiment. Think of something that you really want but has been very hard to achieve. Once you know what this is, then determine the frequency of your persistence. Will it be daily, weekly, monthly? A combination?
If you’re still not comfortable with this, take a look at this example from Ari Meisel, in his book Less Doing More Living. He tells the following story of how he automated persistence and finally got the info he wanted. See if there’s something that you can do along these lines.
In a building where I teach, Verizon FiOS [Internet] service was supposed to be available. For three years, the Verizon website said it was available, but it wasn’t. There’s an email address that you can write to check on when FiOS will be available at a location, so I wrote to them and set up a [daily, automatic email] until they replied. Finally, after sixty-four days, someone wrote back. “Please stop your annoying reminder service. We don’t know when service will be available in your building.” I responded, “Why didn’t you tell me that sixty-three days ago?”
As you can see, all sorts of experiments can be set up to start training your persistence “muscle” if you think it needs strengthening. I’ll close this post with a great quote and with an invitation to continue to send me emails to let me know your thoughts about this or any other post.
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” – Calvin Coolidge
Have a story of persistence you’d like to share? Send it my way and I’ll make a compilation and publish them in a future post!
ACTION
TODAY: Figure out what your experiment in persistence will be about. Then think about what you have that no one else does. What is your equivalent of Dave Kerpen’s Radio Disney that you can leverage to your advantage over everybody else? Use this when being persistent as it will differentiate you and open many doors.
FUTURE: Try out your experiment. Set your schedule for persistence and stick to it. Remember that this is something that you really want, no matter how small or insignificant (like Meisel, he really wanted to know about the internet service in his building). Then get to work. Only by trying out persistence in little steps will you strengthen and grow it to where you will feel more comfortable shooting for bigger goals each time.
Know someone who could benefit from seeing persistence from a different angle, such as the polite one? Please share this post with them! Email, Facebook or Twitter.