Don't give it all away

Robert Gerrish

In the normal course of events, there’s nothing wrong with giving stuff away. Quite the reverse. Being generous is extremely good for business, but it definitely needs to be as part of a strategy. Knee-jerk giving is not a strategy.

In business, what I call the ‘giving trap’ can manifest in a number of ways, many of them seemingly harmless.

Time generosity is the most common giving trap for those working in a service business. If you charge for your expertise by the hour, it follows that every hour has a value. Your potential client or customer needs to be under no illusion that this is how you work.

Dedicating time to the pursuit of business is of course fine and very necessary, but you need to keep a check on it. Your clients must know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and how far you’ll go.

From time to time you’ll be pushed or gently nudged to go further and it’s your response to this that is the entrance to the trap. The moment you go further - without at least clearly flagging it - you risk devaluing your services.

Good, strategic giving is when you add value without being asked. Giving it all away is when you discount your services or weaken the perception of your value by going too far.

Scenario 1:

You give a free one-hour consultation as part of your business development strategy. You’re so keen to hook a client that you let one-hour turn into 90 minutes. You say nothing.
 

Scenario 2:

You give a free one-hour consultation as part of your business development strategy. At around 50 minutes you realise it’s likely to run over the hour. Assuming you’ve determined it’s beneficial to continue, you pause, make clear you are about to complete the hour and offer your client an extension of 30 minutes. You take the opportunity to fully explain your motivation for this action.

Spot the difference? In the first scenario you’re signaling a lack of respect for time AND creating a potentially damaging precedent in the eyes of a potential client.

In the second, you’re highlighting the value of your time AND adding value by giving more.

So common is this issue that many prospects will push you to your limits without you even realising it’s happening.

Those in some of the ‘Professions’  - Lawyers, Accountants and the like – have long since learnt their lesson and you’ll be lucky if you can squeeze much ‘extra’ out of these service professionals.

We can all learn from their behaviour and without disrupting the way we want to work and the way we (at times) like to give.

A good exercise is to develop a written procedure for this and be careful to fully determine what’s okay and what isn’t.

It may just help you next time and you’ll be getting a new relationship off on precisely the right footing.

 

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