Method

Asking Well

A whole band of this paper opens only if somebody says yes. Asking is a skill, it takes ninety seconds to learn, and it is the difference between a good afternoon and a closed door for everybody after you.

Ask a person, not a system

Ground that opens by arrangement almost never has a booking page, and where one exists it is usually for something else.

What exists is a telephone number and a person who is doing three other things when it rings. Everything below follows from that single fact.

Email is worse than a call and not better than nothing. It arrives in an inbox that is read on Thursdays, it cannot answer a follow up question, and it gives the reader no sense of who you are. Call, and if you get voicemail, leave a short one and call again in two days.

The four sentences

Who you are. Six words. Not a biography.
What you are asking for, precisely. The deck, twenty minutes, one afternoon next week. Vagueness makes a person invent the largest possible version of your request and then decline it.
Why, if there is a why. Plain curiosity is a good reason and it is better received than an invented professional one.
That you will fit around them. This is the sentence that gets the yes.

What not to say

Anything that implies you are owed it. You are not, and it is the fastest way to a no.
How far you have come. It converts a favour into an obligation and people can feel that.
A deadline. Your schedule is not their problem and saying so out loud makes it their problem.
The word just. Just twenty minutes, just a quick look. It is a small word that asks the listener to pretend the request is smaller than it is.

Ask early and confirm late

A week ahead for the first call, the day before for the second.

The second call is not nagging. It is the one that catches the thing that changed after the first, and the person on the other end would very much rather you made it than that you arrived to a locked door and a colleague who knew nothing about it.

Taking no

In one sentence, with thanks, and then stop.

This matters more than any other paragraph in this paper. Every arrangement in the ask first band exists because it has never been abused. It survives on the fact that the people who use it accept a no, arrive when they said they would, stay the length they asked for, and leave.

There is a version of the visitor who negotiates, and that person is why ground that used to be reachable now is not. A no accepted cleanly is what keeps the number worth calling next year.

When you get the yes

Arrive at the time you said, not ten minutes early. Early is its own small imposition.
Stay the length you asked for, and start moving toward the end of it yourself.
Ask before photographing anything, including the view.
Say thank you to the person, by name, and mean it.
Write once afterwards, briefly. It costs you two minutes and it is why the next person gets a yes.