Gain by Giving

You can’t get away with doing evil.

And you wouldn’t want to, either. Who wants to live in a world where evil gets rewarded? It would certainly be even more disastrous than this planet we inhabit today. “But people get away with evil all the ti-” no, they only appear to, because the consequences often come later. But more in that in a moment.

Let me advance to you a theory, when selling something to a person, whether it be goods or services, whether you personally profit or not: always recommend that which is best for a person, even if that recommendation is for them to buy nothing and go somewhere else.

Now maybe you might think to yourself, ‘well that’s a worthless thought, that means I won’t make as much money, or I won’t make my sales goal,’ or what have you.

But that’s not exactly right. Let’s say you’re a consultant, and a potential client comes up to you, and during the course of the conversation you come to realize that the customer would be better benefitted by a different service. Now, maybe you can convince the customer to buy your services, and while you can help them, the customer will be partially hampered by hiring you. And maybe turning that customer away is going to cost you a $10,000 sale.

What do you do? Let me argue for a moment why you want to turn the customer towards their better option — because you’re not actually losing business; you’re buying something from that customer with your potential $10,000.

First, you’re buying your own integrity. That’s not a small thing either, because nobody ever corrupts their own mind and soul just one time; if you do it once you’ll do it again.

But besides that…

You’re buying the customer’s trust, and equally important, their good will. When you explain to that customer what it is exactly that you do and why they’d be better off with option X, you’re proving to them that you take care of your customers. And that’s not a useless thing either, that’s a useful little nugget of gold that you’ve given them, because now the moment they find someone who DOES need your exact services they’re going to share that little nugget of gold, and do so eagerly, because people like to be able to share really helpful information, it makes them look good.

And so maybe you give up $10,000 in the immediate future, but you’ve now sent a little informant out in the world who’s going to find clients for you — because remember, people like to clump into groups, and the chances that he knows someone who could use your services is actually much higher than you would think.