Need To Motivate Someone To Take Action? Will You Email, Phone, or Meet Them Face-to-Face?

Have you noticed that there are only 2 ways to get things done in this world?

Do it yourself
- But you have just 24 hours in a day just like everyone else, it’s hard to leverage your time
Get someone to do it for you
- You might be asking them to buy something from you
- You might be asking them for help on something small/big
- You might be asking them to make a small/big change to their normal behaviour, the way they normally do things

Imagine if you could motivate 10 people to do 10 hours of work for you everyday? That’s 100 hours of productivity every day.

So how do you motivate someone?

Money works. Sometimes.

But I think the biggest motivator is attention.

Attention is the new currency of the world.

Actually, this hasn’t changed from when you were 1 year old.

You craved attention then, you crave attention now.

For you, attention could be:

Recognition for a job well done
Respect for your skills and knowledge
The knowledge that people hold you in high esteem
Someone wondering how you are
Getting lots of emails from people who need your advice or decision making skill

It’s the same for the people you are trying to motivate to get something done for you.

You have 3 primary ways to make your request:

Most people get lots of email so it’s easy to miss your super important message. Or easy to ignore it and leave it for later. Or easy to say they didn’t get a chance to get around to it
Even though some emails can take a lot of effort to write, then they are received they feel cheap
You can’t help but wonder if part of the message (or the whole thing) was copy/pasted from emails to other people, or sent in bulk with your name automatically swapped out
If you want to get someone to take action via email you have to pack in high value and answer the question “What’s in it for me if I take action on this right now?”

When you ask for what you want in a phone call, the other person has to make a choice: Yes or No.
It’s hard to say no straight away because it sounds rude.
And it’s hard to say “I’ll think about it and get back to you”
You’ve got their attention while they are on the phone with you so that counts for a lot
But there could be a few distractions going on in front of them. You are only providing audio but the human brain crazes the visual so we are open to a myriad of distractions

There is something about the 2 of you being in the same place, at the same time, that is special
You and they could have been anywhere in the world, but instead you have both chosen to share a few precious moments together one-on-one
When another person is across the table from you it is human nature to want to help them with whatever they need

The next time you are about to email someone to ask them for something, wonder to yourself “would a phonecall be more persuasive?”.

And then wonder to yourself “would a face-to-face meeting be even better?”.

Have your say in the comments below.