Free Stuff Makes Money

Have I mentioned people are selfish?

Perhaps once or twice. And just to be clear, that’s not a judgement. It’s a simple statement of fact. I’m not upset about it. I revel in it. I celebrate it. It’s the best news I’ve heard in my life.

You and I are self interested. Hooray!

And here’s something really interesting to consider. What happens when you give a self interested human being like you and me a gift? No strings attached. No conditions. Just a gift.

It’s pretty simple. We like it. We’ll even accept a kiss from our grandmother if she comes baring gifts.

But a gift by itself doesn’t make us want to buy something (and we both know that’s what we’re here to talk about). It does, however, leave us predisposed to listening to what someone has to say.

Way back in the day when my main man Claude Hopkins was firing on all eight cylinders he wrote about a brush business that was doing a roaring trade by giving stuff away. You’d think it would be hard to sell brushes door to door.

These door to door salesman would simply knock and say to the house wife who answered “I’ve been sent to give you a brush. I have a number of samples here and I’d like you to take your pick“.

Have a look at that sales statement above very carefully. There’s something even better than just a gift in there. Not only is the house wife about to receive a brush, but she’s going to get the kind of brush she wants. How do you think she’s going to feel about that?

The interesting thing is these house wives would then see several brushes they like, and – feeling all warm and fuzzy about the man standing in front of them – they chose their gift and ordered a couple more. The salesman of course doing his job of pointing out the features and benefits of each of the brushes.

How successful can this method be though? Well that brush business had 5000 salesman traveling the United States on foot. Door to Door. I’d say they had a degree of success. Wouldn’t you?

So how do you make use of this in your business. Perhaps you feel like you can’t give anything away. Well I’m here to tell you there is an unlimited amount you can give away and it doesn’t have to cost you more than a few bucks per thousand customers.

And it’s more powerful and warm fuzzy building to a human being than a brush or any physical object.

We live in the information age. And I’m of the view (and just check with yourself here) that after all is said and done, and all the cheap gimmicks and fancy pens have been handed out, what we really want is solutions to our problems. And that can be found in quality information.

Not slapped together drivel. Good stuff. Important Stuff. Valuable stuff. Give me answers to my problems and a pathway to my desires and I’ll listen to anything else you want to say.

Let’s understand how very powerful this is. Recently I sent an email to a business because I was frustrated with them. I’m on their mailing list and they keep sending me super high quality free information. And I lap every bit of it up.

But the mongrels never told me where I could buy something from them.

I had to send them a rude email demanding they told me how I could throw money at them. Because in my mind the quality of the products they sold must have been a direct correlation with the quality of the information they were giving me.

That’s not a joke. It really happened. Now, don’t you want that kind of response from your prospects?

Speaking of unconditional gifts I’d like to give you one. Actually, lots of them if you’ll let me. If you put your name and email address in that Opt-in form on the top right of the page then I can send you a message each time I put together another article like this.

And I solemnly promise to only ever send you an email when there’s something in it for you. So if you’d like to be showered in gifts of salesmanship wisdom to help you squeeze more money out of more customers more often – don’t hesitate, just do it.

Share in the comments below what other ways you can give to your customers.