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If you are writing to an executive or leader, you need to be thinking about writing in a way that makes sure they are responding to you quickly. You are corresponding with people who are getting hundreds of messages every single day. They read the greeting, the first sentence, maybe they skip to the middle very quickly, but then they jump right to the bottom. And if you're a call to action is not clear, it is not specific, then you have lost a lot of leverage in that situation.
This is what you should say to get a faster response from powerful people. There's a couple of phrases you absolutely should not use, and they're probably exactly the ones you are using right now. The biggest culprit is let me know your thoughts. You are putting the onus on the busy person, on the leader or the executive to figure out what you want. Let me know your thoughts on exactly what? You brought up three different things in this email. It's taking too much cognitive load on their part to formulate a response for you.
Two other responses you want to avoid. Number one is looking forward to your response. Again, you've given them no real call to action. They don't know what to do at the end of their message. Should they respond now? Can they wait a week? You have just left an open door for your message to be deprioritized. The last response to avoid is something along the lines of feel free to respond anytime. Again, this is totally lacking urgency.
You have just invited them to put your message in the read later folder for it to never be responded to again. One powerful way to close your emails in a way that prompts a response is by using a binary. So you can say something like, do you prefer Tuesday or Wednesday? Do you want to go with option A or B? You have now made them responding so easy because they just have to choose between one of two responses, not the entire universe of what they could respond to. So it's far more likely that they are going to hit reply and they're going to say yes, number one, that sounds good, run with it. Another great technique to use is to add a deadline to your responses.
You have to think about the time starved decision maker who is reading your email. They are scanning it. They are triaging in real time. And so if you say, I need these numbers by 12 p.m. this afternoon. Is that possible? Now they know this is something I need to respond to then and there, or I can put this for this afternoon and get to it at that point. The last technique that can be really helpful to get fast responses and approvals is to prompt just a one word reply. It may be something like, "Respond yes, and I'll get this in motion." Or, "Respond with the one date that works for
you and I'll make sure to get that booked." Even, "Give this a thumbs up and we'll move ahead." It makes it so much easier for them to do that very quickly in the moment. And it's a win. They respond and you get what you need.
