Help Others Help You

I was at a conference recently at which each attendee got a bag full of goodies from sponsors. During the conference I found out that I had not gotten the coolest goodie: a Bluetooth speakerphone. I went to the person handing out the bags and asked her for one. She said that unfortunately the sponsor had not given them enough and they had run out. No worries I said, here is my business card with my mailing address. After the conference she could get more from the sponsor and mail it to me. My intention was to help her solve my "problem". It wouldn't have done much good to get upset and say that I deserved one yada yada. Well, my approach worked better than I expected: I put her in a situation in which it was hard for her to say no, yet she probably didn't want to deal with the hassle of mailing something to me. So, what happened? She suddenly remembered that they might have saved a few extra goodies in the back and within a minute I had my Bluetooth speaker - which, btw, turned out to be great for hearing music when traveling :-).