Training Yourself to Give When There’s Nothing To Take
Giving for the sake of creating real value can be a powerful way to build business and your personal brand. Many pitfalls abound as there needs to be a balance on what, how and when you give. Too much or too hasty and it’s done wrong, to little and you will be out-maneuvered.
by John LoGioco
Giving smartly is a long term play for companies and individuals shaping their own professional brands. Selling is more fun and rewarding when you actually care about your clients. If you don’t genuinely care, your competitors who do will out-sell you by a long margin, no matter what business you’re in. The more complex the sale, the more this tactic plays out in favor of the genuine sales approach. So assuming you really do care about your clients, the art of smart and genuine giving is both rewarding and highly productive.
Authors like Adam Grant of “Give And Take” are shining a spotlight on this new movement of giving and its advantages, even from a leadership perspective. Sparing the hype, giving is hard to adopt as a strategy if you are not a natural giver. If you are the person who only considers giving as a way of taking, you have much work to do. In fact, if you paint yourself as one who gives only to take, it can ruin a relationship, kill a deal, and harm your reputation. Tread carefully here if you are a natural taker.
So why give if you can’t just take? Simple, giving helps build trust. Trust is the long term oxygen that your sales career or business development career is based upon. There is no greater time saving as a sales rep than to have your prospects already trust you before you start. Over time, if you give smartly, you will build a strong base of trust and good will that will follow you from job to job — and get you into meetings much faster than the competition, who in contrast is likely still trying to establish a base of trust.
Think about it; if someone gives something of value to you, especially if you didn’t ask for it, and it isn’t accompanied by a request, you immediately get the feeling they care about you. You appreciate this kind of behavior. It’s rare in business, that’s why it stands out so much. You think, “wow, this person went out of their way to help me.” People remember that, and in business, when the time comes for you to ask something of them, the responses are most often accommodating.
However, a balance of knowing how and when to give smartly is needed. Give too much and you can also throw the relationship off balance or worse waste your own precious time and resources. Think of giving as a marathon, not a race. Smart giving is keeping a balance between how you give, when you give, the cost of giving (measured in both time and money ) and who you give to. Here are a few examples to jump-start your thinking.
You lost a deal, your prospect went with your competitor and the deal is off the table for two years. You really wanted the deal but lost it. Most reps will table this contact both in mind and in practice. Not you.
A month later you come across a great article on a subject you know your contact will find interesting. You save the article and send it to your contact with a nice note saying something like, “Even though we didn’t strike a deal this go-around, I thought of you when I saw this, you might find this helpful based on your project X.” A couple useful but genuine gestures like this will build trust over time that will, by default, come into play next time the deal is up for renewal or you have a new proposal to submit.
The most fertile ground for building trust is when there is absolutely nothing on the table for you to take. This is the time to give smartly.
It’s a common misconception that giving has to be expensive. One of the most meaningful giving occasions in my career cost about $30.
A key prospect had just had a baby. I genuinely liked this person and she entered my mind when walking by a store that had a small wooden stool in the window. It was a colorful stool for small children to step onto when brushing their teeth. I thought of my prospect, bought it and mailed it to her with a small note saying “saw this stool, thought of the future little one at the bathroom sink brushing for the first time so I had to grab it for you.” I genuinely thought of her and wanted to send the stool because it was a good find. I did not expect anything in return.
Wow, was I surprised. The reaction that came from that gesture went beyond my expectation. I went on to sign this client and years later we still keep in touch.
Lastly another powerful and low cost method of giving is through connecting people who don’t know each other but would benefit professionally if they did. By virtue of being in sales, reps are like bees, visiting all the flowers in the competitive space. Traveling around visiting industry peers is an activity that holds tremendous value. Reps have unique visibility and can leverage this advantage by simply connecting people, but it’s amazing how little reps use this tremendous advantage.
If you connect someone with another contact they find valuable, it can form the basis of a powerful relationship. This form of giving is easy, free, and comes with a double-reward if both connecting parties feel the benefit. When a trusted sales person connects people who don’t know each other, the trust of that sales person is extended through the invitation. If you do this right, over a long period of time, you will likely see tangible relationships that form as a result of your connection, and in some cases these connections will end up working together in the future.
Connecting people because you care is extremely rewarding and over time builds trust in your own personal brand. The ultimate combination is to combine smart giving to a prospect who may be in dire need. In these situations, your giving stands out and builds deep trust much faster than traditional approaches.
The giving movement has of course blossomed into other areas of business, particularly in digital. One pertinent example is content marketing.
Seven years ago, if you’d told a brand they should produce content purely as as service to their customers rather than try to sell them a product, they would have laughed at you. Why spend the time, resources and effort on an endeavor that may not translate into an immediate return?
With just about every Fortune 500 brand experimenting with content marketing now, that question has answered itself.
Initiating meaningful dialogue and building trust with consumers online, at a time when they actively seek ways to avoid advertising, starts with giving. It starts with subverting audiences’ skepticism of brands trying to extract value rather than provide it.
It starts, for businesses and the professionals they employ, with a pleasant surprise.
John is EVP & Founding Team Member @Outbrain
