Yes you do make a great point here. Being honest and open to giving freely is the best way for your business to grow. Also I tend to agree with Fabio as aligning yourself with winners is always a strong point in business.

Thanks
Alan

LED,
Ooh, great piece of advice. I couldn’t agree more. What have you done to find such people?

Looking at the “back-side” of your business, the Employees, I find that the “The One, Core Secret to Having A Successful Business” is being surrounded by people that are better than yourself: an A player wants to be around A+ players!

Hope you agree!
Fabio Aversa

I agree- the relationship is the start, and colors everything. I can’t quote the study, but when they researched all of the modes of psychotherapy, all of the techniques and approaches, what they found was the major piece around people’s healing was all about the quality of the relationship.

So it’s good to have a business/marketing practice that aligns with both my professional and spiritual beliefs.

xox
Lisa

A lot of marketing gurus will teach about marketing message. Sales gurus will talk about the importance of closing sales.

Yet most of them miss on, very important part – the relationship. If you create relationships and in those relationships have clearly shared what you can help people with, the selling is easy. There’s more to this, of course, but the relationship is the start.

And, it’s a relief to take myself out of the mode of expectation- which is a setup in any relationship, I believe. It always feels better to give, for the feeling that we get from it. Anything else is gravy, and a pleasure if we are not looking, waiting, measuring, etc.

Sending love and generousity out into the world will always come back to us, in Divine Order, if not in ways that we want or expect. For me, learning to be generous and share what I have been given so generously, is why I went into practice as a therapist in the first place, and is a way of being in service in this lifetime.

So-thank you for this, it’s a lovely energy to be in as we do the work we love.

Wishing you peace and every blessing,
Lisa

The Secret Miracle…

I think too, we all have different ways and needs. I’m sure what Sean’s doing is directly in line with what he feels he needs and wants from his business. And knowing him to be a good person who cares about his clients/customers, I would guess everything he’s doing is in line with going good.

I think the important thing about having a business is being absolutely clear about what you want from your business and striving in the direction of that. If that’s not purpose, I don’t know what is.

Yet, for me, meaning comes from the internal process of understanding what we want to give to the world.

I guess I was reacting to Sean’s certainty about the transactional type of giving as more effective or a better “strategy”. I just don’t see Gifting as something to be effective or strategic about (in the sense of business progress).

It may, as Karin H. nicely demonstrated, have the effects of increasing your business – but to me this seems a side-effect of showing them who you are and really Connecting with them.

If I “gift” with the intention of increasing my business, then it becomes a transaction (whether the receiver consciously realizes that or not — and I think they mostly do recognize it at some level) and the interaction changes in quality.

So — I agree absolutely that it’s a matter of intention and that both are appropriate and useful, although in different ways. I guess I just wanted to make the point that “giving” is not necessarily the same as “gifting”.

In my perspective, they come from different places and produce different effects on ourselves and others. It’s worthwhile to intentionally choose when to be doing which, I think.

Apologies if I sounded snarky about it.

Karen

I agree about gifting. Yet I don’t think it’s bad to want to give as an avenue for growing your business. I think it’s merely a fine line to walk between openly giving to better people’s lives with the hope (and maybe calculation) that they’ll give back and giving merely for the sake of growing your business. Seems it’s more a matter of intent.

Neither are wrong. Though I do feel openly giving, and being in alignment with that giving, will create much deeper long-term relationships (clients/customers) then will giving for the sake of profit.

The distinction that screams out at me is that Sean is talking about a business “giving” for the outcome of growth and Dawud and Karin H. are talking about “gifting” for the sake of…well…gifting. While gifting anyone anything may have positive ramifications for us in the near or lon-term future, that’s not why we gift. We gift for the pleasure of it – theirs and ours.

And I think people know and feel the difference and that this creates their response to the gift.

If I as giftee feel that something is expected in return for my “gift”, then I look at it with different expectations — and maybe even decline the “gift”. If the “gift” doesn’t match my expectations, I may also resent the giver who has “tricked” me into feeling obligated (or having sacrificed my privacy to get the “gift”).

A real Gift is simply a joy to receive — even if it isn’t “quite right”, I’m delighted by the intent and feel good about the giver. Gifting is about relationship building and authentically connecting — not about transactions and deals.

IMHO –

Karen

I’m fully with you. Sean has quite a successful business as a marketer – I know his work pretty well. Yet, it is “old-school” thinking. The type of thinking that simply does not work in the blogosphere.

But that’s okay, he’s blogging. And he’s a smart guy so I’m sure he’ll not only see the benefits of social media soon, but will also adjust his approach accordingly.

Sean, sorry, I’m with Dawud on this one and not just in the blogosphere.

As retailer we freely give information, without the need to opt-in for the prospect, without any labelling or tagged price on the ‘freebies’. The prospect decides how far he/she wants to take it, i.e. more info, more questions answered on his/her specific needs (and each need of each prospect can be different)

When we give unlabelled (well, is our specific knowledge ‘labelled’?) and start to fulfil these needs then, and only then becomes the info valued (for both us and the customer) and only then opts the prospect in to become a customer.

Not vice versa

Welcome. Great to see you here.

My experience in the blogosphere is quite different. I’ve found clearly that when I’ve freely and openly given to others, I, in turn, get more back.

What I don’t have with giving freely is control over prospects like I do when I force them to opt-in. Control, instead, shifts to the prospect. This means the prospect gets to decide how well I’m marketing my message and how interested they are instead of me making them jump through hoops to see if they want what I offer.

Thoughts?

Giving by itself doesn’t work as well as giving with conditions in place.

Nothing in my book. Actually, I’m alwsys torn between leaving a link to my homepage or to an individual post anyhow.