Fear of being “transactional” 😱

You’re sat at your desk, grimacing, trying to draft an email to a former client, inviting them to lunch.

The problem is you feel extremely uncomfortable. 😬 

You’ve been staring at the email for 20-minutes at this point.  

The reason?  

It all feels a bit too “transactional”.  

You know you need to focus on business development, but you haven’t spoken to them for a while, so you're worried:  

• They’ll think you’re “using” them 
• It makes you a selfish or bad person. 

You continue to stare at the email. Perhaps you decide to do something else and “think this through” later-on. You don’t arrange the lunch.  

😐

There can be layers to this, but today I’ll just offer some context and some tough love.  

Firstly, just know that this is pretty common for women. We've often been socialised to believe that being selfish is a terrible sin. And so in relationships, we’re “supposed” to be the ones always giving, never taking. God forbid you put yourself (or your needs, desires, time etc.) above anyone else. 😱 

My point is, you’re not a flawed person for wanting to meet a business contact purely for business reasons, you’ve just been taught to ‘believe’ that you are. Have a think about who that belief benefits and who it doesn’t, then decide whether you want to keep it.   

Now for the tough love… 

Other people do not have the same concerns. They arranged the lunch. They built the relationship. And now they’re benefitting from everything that flows from it.  

My point is, send the email, even it feels uncomfortable. 🔥

Just to finish, I want to make the point that relationship-building is often a super-power of my clients. And there are a THOUSAND ways to build relationships in ways that bring in business. So, if you’d like to create a longer-term strategy to do business development in ways that feel GOOD to you and play to your strengths, let’s chat.  

In the meantime though… send the email! 😀 

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