Talk, don’t email
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Negotiation Anatomy™
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If process efficiency is your goal — if, like me, you’ve recently discovered the Toyota Production System and can’t stop thinking about it, if you are all about eliminating waste and waiting time, consider the difference between emailing the guy in credit with your question, and waiting 24 hours for him to pick it up, think about it, and send you an elliptical reply (as likely as not kicking off a circle of escalation) — it never quite answers the question you had first time, does it? — or calling the guy up and asking him there and then?
In the first case there is so much waiting: the time it takes to compose that email, setting out the issue clearly, the pros and cons and the desired outcome. Then the waiting. The wondering. The nervousness. The stress. The heart flutters, as you neurotically pick petals off the daisy. Has he read it? Will he soon? Does he even care? Should I maybe send a follow-up email[1]? Will I seem needy?
If you just call him, you get the warmth of human contact right off the bat, you get to lay out the issue directly without all that formatting and colour coding, and if you really need to you can (and okay, probably should) send him an email afterwards memorialising what you discussed — this can be shorter, since you don't need to lay out all the explanatory detail, and no need for colour-coding — and also you are not waiting on anything from thus email: you have the oral decision, you can go — the credit dude can confirm in due course.
See also
References
- ↑ It will never occur to a negotiator to call.