Heads up: this one is GOLD. This is truly something the uber-rich know (and the rest of us need to learn ASAP).
I used to work at an organization of a few 100 people, 50 contractors, and dozens of volunteers.
A lot of money flowed through this organization every week, and a “Payment Processor Inc.” had set its sights on us. For weeks, they emailed our IT department to see if we were interested.
Then one day, they got smart:
- They stopped emailing IT and went to the COO.
- They didn’t just send him a cold email—they sent him a cold gift
Emails are requests for someone’s time. Why should they give it to you? Only if they have to or if you’re already giving them value.
To get his time, they sent our COO a new wood-paneled iPad with the man’s name engraved into it.
From there, the COO waltzed over to marketing and IT and said “we should check out Payment Processor Inc.”
Six months later, they were processing millions of dollars for us.
Gifts Open Doors, But They Don’t Seal the Deal
They had a good-enough product, or else they wouldn’t have gotten past the first call.
Nevertheless, they would have never have gotten that first call if they hadn’t done something to break through the noise.
The beauty of gift-giving to curry favor is that, unless you’re rich, you can’t scale it. You can’t send an iPad to every prospect.
Expensive gifts signal to the receiver that you want to take them seriously.
If you don’t have money…
You can still give plenty of gifts.
Use Your Taste
Give something inexpensive that still demonstrates quality.
Give Your Time
If you want a job with a company that isn’t hiring, do free work for them:
- Write them a report
- Design a marketing campaign for them (and show the ROI on the campaign)
- Send them edited cuts of their content they can use on social media
If they’re smart, they’ll see what an obvious hire you are because you’re self-driven and will only make the company richer.
Gift-giving is an art. To learn more, check out the book Giftology (no affiliate link).
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