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Stop Selling and Start Giving

Give first, and your clients and prospects will be more likely to buy what you’re selling.

Sounds like common sense right?

It may sound like common sense, but unfortunately, most companies take a push approach to their marketing. They push, push and keep on pushing their message without first adding anything of value for the prospect. By taking the approach of helping your prospects first, the law of adding value can completely change how people perceive your message.

The law of adding value first.

Believe it or not, these principles have been scientifically proven. Professor Dennis Regan of Cornell University conducted a number of studies on how adding value to a relationship would affect someone’s buying decisions.

In one his study dubbed the “Coca-Cola Experiment” Professor Regan tested the effects of giving an unsolicited gift to a subject before asking them to buy.

The setup was pretty simple; the pitchman was to sell the unsuspecting subjects as many raffle tickets as he could. Group one received no “added value” before the pitch. Before pitching group two, the pitchman would excuse himself to get a coke. When he came back into the room, he brought an extra coke for the subject. This one little gesture caused group two to buy twice the amount of tickets.

The law of adding value is undeniable; people like to do things for people who have done something for them. But why is it that so many companies fail to add anything of value for their customers or prospects?

But an even more important question is: Forget what the competition’s doing…. what are you doing?

How does adding value fit into your sales equation?