I was talking to a friend the other day who was having problems in her relationship. She was complaining about how her boyfriend never gave her any gifts. “Ask!” I said. She was really confused. “Shouldn’t he KNOW to get me something, especially if I’ve been dropping LOTS of hints?” she asked. Um… no. As usual, I gave her a business example to explain her situation. See, people don’t intuitively know we need something unless we ask for it. You have to ask for the meeting. Ask for the cash. Ask for more when you follow-up. It doesn’t just flow without asking in some way. No, I told her, you don’t need to come right out and say, “get me a present or its over.” But what you could do is ask him how he feels about gift giving. Maybe he’s not a gift giver. It’s not one of his needs so he doesn’t feel the need to do it either. Get to know what’s behind the non-gifting. Maybe he’s saving for a bigger gift for you. Maybe he just needs to be hit over the head a little bit harder with what you want. Just like HE isn’t picking up on the hints that you want a gift, you aren’t digging deeper to the WHY.
The bottom line is, if you want it, you need to start asking questions. It’s the first part of Ask, Tell, Ask. You MUST dig deeper because if you don’t, you will have no anchors to come back to when negotiations start. Believe me, if the goodie she wants is big enough, there WILL be discussion about it.
Life and negotiation are a given. You can’t live without it. So learn how to ask to get what you want. That’s what I told her. Come to find out her guy is saving for a summer getaway for the two of them.
I have a meeting with him next week to talk to him about his Cash Machine so that word “saving” is eliminated from his vocabulary.
See? Everyone’s happy – just have to ask.
