Whether you are requesting time, money, products or services, and whether or not you intend to recompense the provider, requests should always be structured carefully. When you are asking somebody to provide something for you, you are placing yourself in a position where you are inferior to that person (whether or not you feel that way on a personal level), and your language should reflect that. You should clearly express your need and your appreciation. You can thank people for their consideration or attention even before they have provided you with anything concrete.

Often, you won’t want to indicate how desperate you really are for assistance - for instance, you won’t want a bank to think you need a loan so badly that you are probably bad at managing your finances and may be unable to repay it. For this reason, requests are generally couched in neutral language, without any strong emotive terms. Rather than using phrases like “we’re depending on you for this”, “we need this really urgently” and “please don’t ignore this”, you should be using phrases like “we would be grateful”, “we would very much appreciate it” and “this would be most helpful to us”. Since you don’t want to come across as emotional, you should avoid using too many adjectives (words which describe nouns). It can be frustrating to write like this when your request is urgent, but in most cases it will get you better results.

Requests are usually more effective if they are addressed to an individual rather than to an institution, and if they are slightly personal in tone. You shouldn’t speculate about the person you are writing to (for instance by suggesting that he or she must know what it’s like to be in your position), but you may make use of the first person (’I’ and ‘me’, etc.) to good effect. This shows that the request reflects your personal concerns (even if those concerns are voiced on behalf of your business). Most people find it harder to turn down an individual than a faceless company. Signing letters of request ‘yours faithfully’ emphasizes the personal touch and your position of dependency.

When you are writing requests, there are three things which you should cover:-

Why the thing you are requesting will be useful to you.

What you will use it for.

How this will be beneficial to the provider.

In some cases, you may not intend to give the provider any direct compensation in the form of money, goods or services. This would apply, for example, to requests for money from government funding bodies. In this case, you need to emphasize other factors which make improving your business beneficial to the provider. A government funding body, for instance, will be pleased to hear about your ambitions to expand and the prospect of you taking on more staff or providing better security to the staff you already have. Another company may be interested by your offer to recommend them to your business contacts or to offer further (compensated) work to them in the future. The nature of the indirect compensation offered should be clearly specified when you make your initial request.

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