Sending an e-mail to a prospective customer, partner, or investor? Trying to get them to schedule a meeting or phone call with you?
Our advice: put your request, up top, in the form of a specific question.
Journalists have a related idea called the “Inverted Pyramid.” MBA’s know it as the “Minto Pyramid Principle” (you can skip the book, this is the central idea).
So, something like this:
Hi John,
Would you be available for a brief phone call on Thursday (5/16) at 11AM or 3PM PT?
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All the best,
Mike
You get the idea. Your goal is to elicit a response. How?
- Making sure your request is actually seen by putting it up top, with all of the other info and details below
- Challenging the recipient by proposing something very specific (encouraging them to think about it your request in a concrete way)
- Framing your request in the form of a question (which naturally begs for a response).
Jakob Nielsen has written up many more useful and related tricks.