The Clean and Green Club

By Shel Horowitz

I’ve long been an advocate of the give-first attitude in business: do nice things for others, and nice things will happen to you.

In Go-Givers Sell More (Penguin Portfolio, 2010), authors Bob Burg and John David Mann focus entirely on this attitude. Unlike their earlier The Go-Giver, this is not a parable but a business how-to book—and frankly, I prefer it that way.

Among the many wonderful insights:

• You don’t make a sale; you receive it
• The “economy of love” is ever-expanding: qualities like knowledge and appreciation multiply rather than deplete as you use them
• By creating value for others, you make yourself indispensable —and by doing this in tough times, you really stand out among others who may be “looking out for number 1,” and are likely to thrive even more
• Be genuine, authentic; never let someone feel you’re “techniquing” them
• While selling involves other people, adding value is something you can do even without the other person
• Let the other person get the glory; have the emotional maturity to acknowledge your own feelings, but focus on the feelings of others
• If you respond, rather than react—if you de-escalate a situation that appears to be spiraling out of control—you raise the emotional maturity of the entire interaction
• Moral authority carries more weight than structural/hierarchical authority (so doing the right thing matters more than being the boss)
• Flip the usual question on its head: ask “what have I done for you lately?”
• Also flip your Sales Training 101; for example, instead of seeing anyone within three feet as within reach of your sales spiel, see that person as someone worth getting to know better: ask questions that get your new contact to talk about his or her business in a meaningful way
• Think of sales as more like farming than fishing; much of the work is in the preparation
• To be seen as confident—don’t be afraid to speak well of your competitors
• Don’t just give information; give meaning
• Be on your client’s side; the sale should be done with your client, not to the client
• Give your client every escape hatch,every chance to raise objections; the way you deal sympathetically and genuinely with those objections will have more to do than anything else with whether a sale is concluded, and the bigger the escape hatch you provide, the less likely it is that your client will want to climb through it
• There’s no contradiction between self-interest and altruism
• Prayers of appreciation or gratitude are just as important as prayers of petition
• Giving creates more abundance in the world
• Great gifts often disguise themselves as crises
• Open your heart to trust, but keep your eyes open

—
Shel Horowitz’s most recent book is Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson)