V quick tip to avoid p*ssing off someone who just helped you out

March 15, 2016

A move keeps being made by people I’ve just favours for, that makes me want to stop doing them favours.

Running True Stories Told Live, my live storytelling show (and, apparently, being known as “a staple in the storytelling community“(!)), I get a lot of requests to be put in touch with this person and that person.

Because I <3 getting people tell their stories, I help these people out. I give them email introductions – and what happens next, is what almost always happens, and what REALLY annoys me:

I get sucked into the email chain between these two people.

Here is a very quick and classy way to get around that:

When you have received an email introduction, as you ‘reply all’, move the person who introduced you from ‘to:’ to ‘bcc:’. This way, you can thank them, the person you’re introduced to can see that you thanked them – and the person who’s done you a favour doesn’t then have an onslaught of irrelevant-to-them emails in their inbox.

Eg:

to: NewFriend
cc:
bcc: Marsha

Subject: Re: Newfriend, meet FavourAsker!

Thanks so much, Marsha! (Bcc’d)

Hi NewFriend, Marsha says you’ve kindly offered to help me with XYZ. I’d love to buy you a coffee and ask you about…

etc etc etc

So simple, hey? And then you don’t shoot yourself in the foot by immediately pee’ing off someone who just did you a favour (which is what literally just happened to me).

Hat-tip to Ramit Sethi, who first taught me this trick in his 50 Proven Email scripts.

Thanks so much for reading! Have you tried this? Let me know in the comments below! And if you know someone who makes a lot of introductions (or you’d like YOUR people to stop cc’ing you), you can share this post using one of the round buttons below.

You RULE!

xx (Yes Yes) Marsha

PS this tip was first sent as a secret, off-blog bit of intel to the Yes Yes Family (before some of them asked if I could put it where they can share it). To get even more advice, tips, plus stories that I won’t put on the internet, come and join the Yes Yes Family – it’s free! Just pop your details in below:

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