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Dennis Collins: Welcome back to Connect & Convert, the Sales Accelerator Podcast where small business owners get the insider secrets to growing their sales faster than ever. Hey, it’s Dennis Collins. I’m joined, as always, by my lovely and talented co-host, Leah. Say good morning, Leah.

Leah Bumphrey: Hi, from Canada. Hope everyone’s having a great day.

Dennis Collins: Yes, ma’am, indeed. Well, we have an interesting Part Two today that maybe, hopefully, you heard the first part of this. When is a gift not really a gift? That’s an episode we had a while back. Well, today is Part Two. When is a gift really a gift?  Let’s be more specific about the positives. We want to give positive information, right, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: Exactly. You know what? There’s too much negative. There’s too much don’t do this. Don’t do this. Don’t do this. But it’s the positive. How? What’s something good?

Dennis Collins: Well, we’re going to do that today. You know, this is all based on Robert Cialdini’s law of reciprocity. Of all the seven laws of influence that Cialdini has promulgated, I would say the law of reciprocity is the one I hear about most because it’s very simple in the minds of most people to execute.

I give you, you give me. Well, not so fast. In a previous episode, we shared the misfires, right? And now how do we use reciprocity properly? Leah, there are three things that we talked about that make a gift appropriate for the Law of Reciprocity. Do you recall the three things that we talked about back when we did the last episode?

Leah Bumphrey: The three in order?

Dennis Collins: No, they don’t have to be in order.

Leah Bumphrey: As you know, for me, it’s about the story of it all. So when you are giving, do you have any strings attached to it? Is there anything that you are requiring back? Is it given with the proper motivation, with conditions, why is this coming?

And to me, that’s the most important one. I say from the heart, what is the expectation from it?

Dennis Collins: What is the expectation? So often in sales and marketing business, we are so wrapped up in meeting our quotas, or hitting a goal, or making a commission.

Hey, that’s human nature. That’s okay. But unfortunately, that motive does not enact the law of reciprocity, does not bring it about, it’s not correct.

Leah Bumphrey: I was just going to say there’s one of the principles  – is it meaningful? There’s no meaning if it doesn’t enact that that type of emotion.

Dennis Collins: Right. I mean, the more meaningful our gift, the more exceptional the gift. And that meaningful, by the way, some people say, “Oh yeah, I don’t have that kind of money.” Meaningful, you know, “Count me out.” I mean, that costs a lot of money. But today we’re going to talk about ways that don’t cost a lot of money and maybe don’t cost any money.

The other one is unexpected. If I give you something that you didn’t expect that’s meaningful, what happened? Oh, I’m surprised. And if it’s meaningful, I’m pleasantly surprised.

Leah Bumphrey: And often, if it’s unexpected, the question is did I miss something? It causes an immediate connection of “I didn’t know that they were going to do this.”

I didn’t know this was happening. What happens next?

Dennis Collins: Well, think of a time when you got an unexpected gift. Is there a better moment than when you had no idea this was coming. It’s meaningful. I mean, isn’t that the greatest feeling in the world?

Leah Bumphrey: There’s something about a surprise that’s on purpose. Yeah.

Dennis Collins: Somebody cares about me. Right. Now the third one to me, other than the condition one that you stated first, and this one takes it over the top. Make it personal. For instance, producer Paul Boomer knows someone who’s very close to him and personalizes gifts. What does a personal gift look like?

It could be as little as just engraving someone’s name on something. Or, how about this? How long has it been since you wrote a handwritten note to somebody?  I have a stack of note cards here in my office. And you know what? I don’t use them often enough.

Is there anything more personal than a handwritten note? I don’t know what it could be. We went to a wedding, the queen and I, a few months ago, and we just got a thank you note. It is handwritten, and personalized with our names. We provided a gift to the bride and groom. They thanked us for the specific gift and signed it with love from the couple that got married. That’s like a million dollars to me. You know?

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, for sure. And it makes you wonder, using that specific example, why is the trend toward generic “thank you?” Maybe a picture, no commentary, no little note, no nothing to indicate who is giving it to whom and why you are reaching out and saying thank you.

It boggles the mind. And this come into “what is a gift and what isn’t?” because what happens is people are trying to do something positive. So the intent is to make a connection. The intent in the case of personal relationships or business is to move everything forward and to establish something.

We let ourselves get away from doing it in a way that is gonna take up time. We feel we’re too busy, we feel that we can’t do it properly. And so, shortcuts are taken, and then it’s better not to do it than to take a shortcut that’s gonna get you lost.

Dennis Collins: Agreed. Well, let’s share with our wonderful viewers and listeners a couple of ideas.

Maybe you never thought about this. Maybe you have. How about this? This one usually shocks people. How about the gift of listening to someone? Why is that a gift? Unfortunately, it’s a gift because so few people do it. I mean, that’s a sad commentary. How many people really listen?

They put the phone down. They focus on you. They paraphrase what you’re saying. So Leah, if I understood you, you said X, Y, Z.  They paraphrase, they make it personal. Listening, unfortunately in this world, is unexpected. We don’t expect people to listen to us anymore. So can you give the gift of listening without spending a million bucks?

I’ll take the money. I’ll listen to you for a million dollars. But hey, you can do it without that. Active listening. How about compliments? Leah, what’s the difference between a real compliment and a fake compliment? I’m sure we have all received fake compliments. How do you determine which is real and which is fake?

Leah Bumphrey: You know, it’s interesting because in the English language, we even have a word for a fake compliment, and it’s a line. Right? Someone’s feeding you a line.

Dennis Collins: Well, there are other words, but they’re not very nice. We won’t say it.

Leah Bumphrey: No, we won’t. But absolutely. And a real compliment, again, it comes into all of these categories.

It’s personal. It’s unexpected. It’s meaningful. It is appreciated because it’s real because it makes you feel a certain way and somebody is giving you the feeling that they have and wanting you to make sure you feel that as well. That’s how connections are made.

Dennis Collins: A compliment makes people feel important.

A fake compliment backfires. We can spot it. There was a guy I used to do business with. I can’t remember his name right now. I think it was Gary. And back in the day, we all wore ties. You know, men had to wear suits, and ties, right? I’m glad those days are over.

But so I would always have a tie and I picked out my ties with some care. I enjoyed it. But this guy, no matter what, “What a nice tie!” “What a great tie!” That was his opening line and he did it almost every time I saw him.  You know, it may have been sincere, but it sounded fake. He can’t possibly like every tie that I wear. I mean, it was overdone so that’s what a fake compliment sounds like.

How about if I can save you time? If I have something that I can show you, help you with, and introduce you to that can save you a large amount of time, is that a gift?  Is it unexpected? Is it personal?

Leah Bumphrey: All those things. Sometimes it has nothing, like if someone’s offering me a way to save time in changing my oil, well, I don’t change the oil in my car.

So actually it’s not meaningful to me and it’s not helpful to me and it might be interesting to me or to my husband, but it’s not really for me.

Dennis Collins: So saving time would have to be relevant to your situation, to stuff that you are wasting time on, right? How about cheerfulness? Do you ever think of cheerfulness as a gift?

You know, we have two choices. We can have a positive frame or we can fall into the negative frame, the negativity bias that unfortunately our brain is prone to. Have you ever thought of cheerfulness as a gift that is meaningful? Yeah, we love cheerful people. Is it unexpected?

I hate to say it. Once again, it’s like listening. There aren’t a lot of cheerful people out there sometimes. Everybody is worried about this and that. You know, there’s a lot of things to worry about. But that person who can be cheerful, in spite of everything, that’s a gift. That gives us something that helps our spirit, helps our framing to get out of negativity bias.

Does that make sense?

Leah Bumphrey: It elevates us. There’s a literary character from a long time ago, her name was Pollyanna. And people actually use that term, you know, you don’t want to be a Pollyanna and, “Oh, it’s a Pollyanna statement” because you’re being positive.

And, “Oh, I just love doing the dishes. I love washing the floor. I love having a million things to do.” But people missed the point of Pollyanna. And I was reading a little bit about the author that created her. And it wasn’t about mindless joy. It was about Pollyanna seeking joy in what it was that she was doing.

And it changed my mindset from making fun of this — and you could say a little bit ditzy in our current language — but this character who was genuinely seeing the happiness in doing this and this, and this and elevating the people around her. Her mantra was to be good and do good things.

And that’s pretty impressive. So sometimes we have to dig a little deeper to make sure that the joy isn’t coming across as fake. But if there’s genuine reason for positivity that you can share and that you, as opposed to, isn’t the weather terrible out there and did you see the news and all of this stupidity and oh my goodness, there’s so much bad in the world.

Oh, I don’t even want to have those conversations.

Dennis Collins: But isn’t that how so many conversations start? It’s easy and it’s on our minds and, you know, I don’t want to get too much into the science because not everybody is a nerd like I am, but the science is very clear. Unfortunately, our brains have a negative bias.

They go to the negative far quicker than they go to the positive. The positive has to be chosen. And I liked one thing you said about Pollyanna. She found the joy in the situation. She wasn’t mindlessly joyful. She framed whatever situation she was in as a joyful situation. Wow. What a gift.

What a gift. We can only be so lucky to have that gift given to us every day of our lives.

So, I guess the point of this whole episode is this: gifts can be intangible. You don’t need to give money or jewelry or cars or rewards.

No. In fact, A reward is not a gift if you perform a certain function. Let’s keep it in sales. Let’s say you hit your quota. And when you hit your quota, you get a bonus. Is that a gift? No, that’s a reward. There’s a condition. You have to do this to get that. Rewards are great. Nothing against rewards, but don’t mistake a reward for a gift.

And the other thing about a gift is how do you claim it? Because most people don’t see listening as a gift. They may not see giving advice as a gift. They don’t see cheerfulness as a gift. They don’t see saving time as a gift. How do you claim that? How do you say it? Because if it’s not claimed, it doesn’t exist.

So you have to carefully find a way to note it without being arrogant or not being egotistical. How do we claim the fact that we just gave a gift? That’s an art that we will not tackle in this episode. That’s a whole ‘nother episode. How do you claim your gift without sounding like a jerk?

Anyway, Leah, do we have any questions about this? You always have some questions that our viewers and listeners have sent in. Do we have any questions today that we can answer?

Leah Bumphrey: Yes, we have a sales manager who works in an industry that is client-focused. His salespeople have to go out and about, and he is wondering about a book recommendation for new hires.

One book. He does not want to challenge them or get them freaked out about a tome because there are so many books. But if he was to give them one, what would we recommend?

Dennis Collins: That’s a hard question because as you see behind me here, there are probably 5-600 books. And if you looked at my little Kindle thing here, there’s probably another 800 or 900. That’s a tough question for me, but I’m going to give you an answer for our listeners. If I could only read one book about sales, my go-to book would be by a guy named Jeb Blount. It’s called Sales EQ.  Emotional intelligence for salespeople. He’s written about, I don’t know, 15, 20 books. He considers that book his major work of all the books he’s written. He considers that his major contribution to the sales industry is Sales EQ.

If you get it, you won’t be able to put it down. If you’re at all interested in sales and it’s not gobbledygook, it’s not a bunch of research. He does use science to back up what he says, but not overly. He tells a lot of stories. That would be my recommendation.

Leah Bumphrey: I’m excited. I think that we’ll give my recommendation in another episode. But I’m excited about this one because I haven’t read this, Dennis, and I can’t believe you haven’t told me about this guy. So now I’m going to have to go out and get this book.

Dennis Collins: I’m not selling his book for him, but you can easily find it.

Leah Bumphrey: We can find it.

Dennis Collins: So let’s issue our challenge for today. Do you have a good challenge?  Let’s challenge our viewers and listeners, please.

Leah Bumphrey: I do. My challenge, and it’s going to feel hokey, it’s going to feel odd but spend the next seven days smiling at people.

And I’m not talking about just your kids and the people that you work with and for. I’m talking about when you’re walking down the street, even the guy who’s really irritating you in traffic, make a point – and not a a creepy smile – but a genuine smile. And see how it makes you feel and how it makes them feel because that is the simplest gift we can give people.

So that’s my challenge. Do it for seven days. Make it conscious. Write it down so you don’t forget because you will forget about day three. Do it. You gotta remind yourself every hour. Do a mental reminder. Smile. Do not let somebody go by without smiling. At the very least, you’ll have a little fun.

They’ll wonder what you did.

Dennis Collins: They’ll wonder why you’re looking at them smiling. Don’t smile at me. What do you mean by smiling at me?  That’s, that’s a great concept. Great challenge. I love the challenge. Well, that’s it for today’s episode. Now you have a little better idea of when a gift really is a gift.

Meaningful, unexpected, personal with no conditions. That’s the end of this episode of Connect & Convert, the Sales Accelerator Podcast. We’ll be back soon. Stay tuned. We’ll be back. Bye, Leah.

Leah Bumphrey: Bye, Dennis.

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