Reciprocity is a hard-wired instinct you can use to grow your business. Old Town Deli in Boonton gives free sandwiches unexpectedly. A web-design firm refunds part of the fee at the end. The key: the gift has to be surprising, not a predictable loyalty program.
How's business going? Not great because of the, you know, stores are closing down. I know, I know. Reciprocity. It's hardwired into all of us. Whatever is done upon you— someone says, "I just, I like you. You're great." What do you feel like? They're awesome! I love them! Or someone says, "You know, you really have an attitude. I cannot deal with you." You're like, "You've got the attitude!" Did any— you know, the holidays are approaching, right? Christmas is almost upon us. At least that's what the catalogs say. But tell me this happens to you during Hanukkah or Christmas. You get the card, you know, happy holiday cards with people's pictures, my family, our cute doggie, and all of a sudden you get that one card from like Aunt Susan who you were sure had died 3 years ago. And what do you do in that moment when you get Aunt Susan's card? You run to the Hallmark store to send a card back to her. You have to. I mean, she's alive, for God's sake. It's a miracle. It's a Christmas miracle. We run out to reciprocate. We as human beings are hardwired to reciprocate in kind. Whatever is done upon us, we are hardwired to do the exact same thing back. It probably happened while you were driving here today because it happened to me. I was getting on Route 280 and a guy let me in. He did the old hand move like this, you know, go, go, go. So what do I do? I'm like, I do the same thing back. Thank you. Love you. Right? This is true. The next guy that I come up— because you got to still squeeze in, right? It's New Jersey traffic after all. The guy in front of me, I'm a little too close to his bumper, so I get the finger. So what do I do to him? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, right? I love the guy behind me because he waved, and I hate the guy in front of me because he gave me the bird. And that's reciprocity. So how does this play out in business? Well, there's a lot of people here who are probably familiar with Boonton, right? Boonton? Okay. So I grew up in Boonton, and there's one, or a couple delis there, but there's one deli called the Old Town Deli. And if you've ever eaten there, it's— I hate to say it's relatively unimpressive, except for something that they do that's really cool with reciprocity. There's two owners, there's a father-son, John and John. I don't know which one's which. Just testing if you're awake. So you can go to the Old Town Deli and you can get like a roast beef sandwich or something. And you bite into it and it's like, okay, it's a little bit dry, it's not Thuman's clearly. And sometimes though, you'll go in there and John will look at you and say, "Hey, I never saw you here before. This roast beef sandwich is on me." And all of a sudden, that sandwich becomes so delicious, so tasty, because of reciprocity. This guy is awesome. Old Town Deli rocks. Sometimes you go to Old Town Deli and it's your 5th or 6th or 100th purchase And John will put his arm on your shoulder and say, "You come here so often, I really appreciate it. This sandwich is on me." And that sandwich becomes so delicious. But by doing reciprocity, he gets lines of business, people packing the place, because people appreciate so much and spread the word. They reciprocate. You all know about Old Town Deli in Boonton now because of what he did for me. So, in your business, what can you do to facilitate reciprocity? I'll give you a hint or a rule to do it. Unexpected gifts are always the way to go. If John was always giving me a free sandwich every 5th purchase, it's more like I'm in a buyer's club. I gotta buy some stuff. I'll get onto his system, I'll look for when I'm short on change, and I'll say, "Mm, I'm at 4 sandwiches, I'm not going." Next time I'm short on change, if I'm 5 sandwiches, I'm going. I'll be predicting the system. So reciprocity doesn't work that way. It works when it's unexpected, like Aunt Susan's card, who we were convinced had died. When you do it unexpectedly to clients, they will respond the most favorably. So, how about this one for size? My, uh, web business, it's a company I own, um, we design websites that can be relatively very expensive, tens of thousands of dollars for a project. And We'll take on a project, say, for $50,000, but we know if we do just our job, we probably can get it done for about $47,000. But we still charge $50,000. And then, at the end of the project, we call the customer and say, "Everything went swimmingly well. I have great news. I have a $3,000 check I need to refund to you." And they're like, "Whoa! You were the best company ever! I wish you'd charged me $100,000. I would have made $6,000 back. Right there, I should have done that." But my favorite little trick I'm going to turn you on to was with my own business. When I wrote my book, I don't have a copy here, but when I wrote my book, it was a dud. Like, no one bought my book. And to give you a sense, the first day, authors of books go through what's called a launch. The first day you do all this big razzmatazz, you dance, you tap dance and stuff, just to get people to buy at least one book. I sold zero. And what zero means is my own mother did not buy a copy of the book. Okay? Well, what I did though was I started doing this reciprocity move, and I would send a second copy with it, and there would be a note saying, "This is a gift to you, and I totally recognize you're probably not going to want to read my book once and then read it right again in sequence, but feel free to regift it. I'm totally cool with that." And what do I get? People sending in rave reviews. "This is incredible. No authors do this, and by the way, I gave it to my best friend, and they now love your book." And it started this little viral campaign. Reciprocity. In your business, in whatever you do, do something that forms reciprocity. Give something unexpectedly and just watch what the return is. Thank you very, very much. Sorry.
