Don’t Ask If You Don’t Want the Answer…
In this post, I would like you to consider something you say most days that gets you the opposite of what you want. Using the question – Why Not?
‘Why Not Come Out to the Cinema With us Tonight?’
Have you ever heard a friend say, ‘Why not come out to the cinema with us tonight?’. 9 times out of 10, you’ll tell them why not, because of this or that or the other. After all, they did ask you to think ‘Why not…?’ and you answered with several very good reasons why not. Brilliant! They asked and you told them. Yet what they really wanted was for you to go to the cinema and there you are telling them why you won’t. A lose-lose situation.
Friends Aren’t the Only Ones That Ask ‘Why Not…?’.
The question is part of our ‘being’. No one questions its use, yet we are always surprised by the results. So entrenched is the question in our culture that companies spend millions getting brilliant copy written and that fatal question still sneaks through missing vital sales.
Even Those Gurus at Facebook Aren’t Aware
As soon as I read this message from Facebook I thought, ‘I haven’t got time, social media won’t work on that business, and stop harassing me’. Instead of encouraging me to post something, the exact opposite happened. I became more resolute as to why I couldn’t post on Facebook and now had 3 very good reasons not to.
Even Marks and Spencer Get it Wrong
After buying some of the famous M&S underwear, they asked on their packaging, ‘Why not try our website?’. My response was, ‘I can’t be bothered, that’s why’.
Be Careful What You Ask For
As the famous phrase goes, from Aesop’s Fables, ‘Be careful what you wish for’. An update on this phrase is, ‘Be careful what you ask for’. If you want your friends to go to the cinema then you are more likely to get them to join you if you ask, ‘Fancy coming to the cinema?’, because if you ask ‘Why not…’, they’ll tell you why not.
Don’t ask that fatal question and get the opposite of what you want.
