Six ways to ask for what you want at work – and actually get it
'First and foremost, build friendships with people and understand that everyone is a potential person who can help your career in some way'
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Your support makes all the difference.Six ways to ask for what you want at work – and actually get it
Rent the Runway co-founder and CEO Jenn Hyman knows how to get what she wants.
She started the now famous clothing rental company in 2009 with Jennifer Fleiss, who she met when they were at Harvard Business School. Over the last eight years, Rent the Runway has grown into an empire worth nearly $1bn (£0.7bn), according to The Washington Post.
Ms Hyman said a huge part of creating such a successful career was learning how to ask for exactly what she wanted in a way that ensured she would get it.
Here are her top tips for asking for what you want in order to get ahead in your career.
1. Put in the effort to build relationships
Cultivating relationships is critical on any career path. As Ms Hyman said, you will always get a better result if you ask for something from someone who already likes you.
“First and foremost, build friendships with people and understand that everyone is a potential person who can help your career in some way,” Ms Hyman told INSIDER. “Jenny and I had a philosophy at the beginning of Rent the Runway that was ‘never turn down a meeting’. That philosophy came from the belief that every single person can help advance Rent the Runway and that we don’t just need to meet with the CEO of an organisation.”
2. Do not be afraid of rejection
Do not worry about people not picking up the phone or not wanting to meet with you.
“Just keep on going at it and continuing to ask,” Ms Hyman said. “Because I think that women often don’t put themselves out there as much as they need to in order to accelerate their business.”
Rent the Runway would not exist today if Ms Hyman and her co-founder had not had the guts to cold-call fashion designer Diana von Furstenberg and send cold emails to the CEOs of major department stores, Ms Hyman said.
“You’ll be shocked at how many people will actually meet you if you just ask for 10 minutes of their time,” she added.
3. Know your audience
Keep in mind who you are asking for help and what they can give you.
“If you’re approaching the CEO of a company and asking for their time, you know that they probably have limited time, so framing something around, ‘can I have five minutes of your time or 10 minutes to chat?’ is going to be a lot more amenable to them than if you want to come in and meet with them for several hours,” Ms Hyman said.
4. Use your connections
Those relationships you have put time into building and maintaining will always come in handy.
“I think figuring out, are there other people who you know who can provide warm intros to people that you want to meet,” Ms Hyman said. “We’re all more apt to help and meet with, spend time with people who are referred to us by other people who we trust and have relationships with.”
Utilise that contact list to constantly expand your network.
5. Be patient
Although it can be hard, you cannot expect everything to happen all at once.
“With Rent the Runway, we had to build a lot of relationships with designers and we now have 550 brands who are our partners,” Ms Hyman said. “But to sign on the first 28 brands was incredibly hard. Nobody wanted to meet with me.”
But through persistence and patience, she eventually got what she wanted.
6. Remember to follow-up – but not too often
Ms Hyman recommends checking in with someone you have reached out to about once every few months, depending on the situation.
“You have to be persistent, but not too persistent,” she said. “Like they couldn’t be receiving an email from me in their inbox every day. That’s just stalker-ish behaviour. But there’s a level of like, you have to understand that maybe sometimes someone will respond to you the second or the third time that you reach out, because they’re seeing that this is something you’re super passionate about.”
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Read the original article on Business Insider UK. © 2018. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter.
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