Giving People Permission to Say No to the Money Question

Recently, we had a guest speaker in class who discussed what it’s like to ask the “money question” of prospective clients.  In the current climate of our society, I find that to be a touchy subject – people don’t like to talk about money, in just about any situation.  No one talks about their salaries, or their budgets, or their financial struggles, or anything of the sort – in fact, it’s kind of a taboo subject in colloquial conversation.  That’s why it was so interesting to hear the discussion of what it’s like to ask people for money, since, at least to me, that would be a daunting prospect.

The biggest thing I took away from what I heard is that, when asking for money, the best thing to do is to give people the permission to say no and not give you anything.  When asking for money, especially when it’s in the high dollar amounts, it is not in any way helpful to your cause to expect people to automatically say yes just because you’re asking.  And this ties into the fourth Core Concept that we talked about in class, that discussed how a decision not to make a decision is actually a decision in and of itself.  If someone doesn’t know if they want to give money, that is okay and they don’t have to give it to you. Once you make it clear that there is no pressure on the situation, it suddenly takes a lot of the awkwardness out of the ask, and the “money question” becomes less daunting.