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Got a 7am meeting on a Monday expensing breakfast because it's in policy wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast. If your company used Ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text.

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Yay. Free your team from expense reports today. Switch your business to ramp.com hey oh. Welcome to the hundred dollar MBA show business insights you can count on every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's lesson you will learn Do Gifts Work in Business? Gift giving Sending a little something to your clients or your potential partners that you want to partner up with in your business. Does this actually work or is it a big waste of money? Or could it be even misunderstood as a bribe? Is there a right way to do this? Is there a wrong way to do this? What are some of the best practices and what can you expect by giving gifts to others in business? This is a very interesting topic because not a lot of people talk about it. That's why I wanted to address it in an episode here on the podcast. I'm going to share with you my own experiences on both sides of the gift and tell you what I've learned in my experiences, what some of the experts in this topic, in this idea of gift giving say about how it can help your business. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. A few years ago I had dinner with a guy named John Rulin. John is the author of a book called Giftology the Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut through the Noise, Increase Referrals and Strengthen Client Relationships and Retention. That's the subtitle of the book. I remember asking John about 30 million questions at that dinner because I always wondered, is giving gifts faux pas? Is there a right way to do this? How can I improve upon my style when it comes to giving something to my clients to say thank you? And he gave me a few pointers and I started implementing his ideas that he shares in his book. And I want to share with you what the results were when I implemented them. The first concern I had was is this going to be seen as a bribe? I don't want the customer or the potential business partner or partnership to think I'm saying, hey, please work with me or please do business with me. Here, here's a little gift in exchange for you to Be convinced or to say yes to this partnership. And what John said is timing is really important when it comes to gift giving. And one of the things I learned from him and implemented is it's actually more effective to give gifts to clients or anybody in business after you're doing business, after you're working together, not before you already got what you wanted, meaning you already secured the customer or you already secured the deal with a partner. So the gift can't be seen as a bribe. It's more seen as a thank you. And that's really where the power of gifts in business really shines. The second thing he mentioned is gifts should be unexpected, Meaning you don't tell them that, hey, if you sign up with me, if you work with me, I'm going to give you this, because that becomes part of the transaction, that becomes part of the deal. That's what they're expecting. And it's not seen as a gift. A gift is something you give with no expectation of anything in return. And that's really important in order for this to work. You can't think that by giving a gift you should be getting something in return. You got to see this as a part of building a relationship and saying thank you. So, for example, sending out maybe some company swag a T shirt to a customer when they sign up as a client, you might click their mailing address. When you sign them up as a client, they're not expecting this gift. They get this in the mail with a nice little note. It's a nice little surprise, and it makes an impact. And what I found, when I send unexpected gifts to clients or anybody I'm doing business with, it really puts a smile on their face. And their appreciation of this gift, just from a relationship point of view is exponential. It's so much more than when they're expecting it. And the more unexpected, the more the impact. Let me give you an example. On the receiving end, I received a gift from somebody I worked with, Dan Martell, who was my business coach for a very, very long time. After my coaching and training was done with him, and we said, best of luck and it was great working with you. He surprised me and Nicole with a gift, got in the mail, wasn't expecting it. It was a beautiful set of knives that we can use in our kitchen. It had an engraving in the knife. And it's very memorable, not only because it's a physical gift and it was a surprise, but it was really a surprise because you're really not expecting a gift every after your business Relationship is done. But this leaves an impression. Now, if anybody asks me, hey, I'm looking for a SaaS coach. I will not hesitate to recommend Dan, not because of the gift, but because I remember Dan. It left a mark and he's top of mind. Nicole and I run an event called Oscon, which is in the snow here in Australia. Yes, we get snow here during the winter and it's for business owners here in Australia that want to meet other amazing business owners. Sort of like a little mini retreat. Last year when we were starting the whole trip and we're loading up the van so that we could head down to the snowy mountains, we surprised every new attendee with a little goodie bag. And these were very small gifts, not expensive, but because it was unexpected, it was a nice little touch and people really loved them because there were things they can actually use. A bottle of water, hand sanitizer, mints, and an Ozcon beanie. Because we're going down to the snow, it's going to be cold. And even though they were small, little simple gifts, everybody commented on how they loved this and they used everything in the goodie bag because it was so useful and practical. Now you might be thinking, omar, this sounds great and nice and all, but what does this mean in terms of an ROI for my business? Well, gift giving is just about building relationships. It's about seeing the long term investment you're making with every single client, one on one. And let's just be honest, when somebody gives us a gift, we remember them, they have a little bit of a special place in our heart. Let me give you an example. Let's say you invite a bunch of friends over for your birthday, a birthday party. Let's say you invite 10 friends and three of your friends come with gifts. It's not like you're going to dislike the seven other friends. You're happy they came and they're still your friends, but those three friends that thought of you, got you a card, got you a gift, even if it's just something small, they have a special place in your heart. You can't help it. As human beings, we have this feeling of reciprocity. Even if you reciprocate in just liking them more and it sends a signal that this person just goes the extra mile, is thoughtful. Now customers, they are shopping around, they're working with a whole lot of businesses, a whole lot of vendors, a whole lot of different transactions throughout their business, throughout their days, throughout their years. If you want to stand out, if you want to remember, you want them to be a customer for a long period of time, giving a little something to them just so they can remember you. And for you to stand out against everybody else who doesn't do this is going to go a long way. If you want to get into this, my recommendation is start small. You don't need to spend a lot of money, 20, $30, and you don't need to do it just with your customers. You could do it with anybody that you work with or have a relationship with in business. For example, I got on a call with one of my friends in business, Spencer Fry. He runs Podia, which is a great course platform. We exchanged ideas and we got to know each other and I just really enjoyed the fact that he took the time out to speak to me on a call. I knew that he was a huge Kobe Bryant fan, so I sent him Kobe Bryant's book. It's like a picture book, a coffee table book that you can put as a centerpiece in your living room. It cost me 20, $30 on Amazon. Pretty insignificant. And I did it just because I was thankful. I wasn't expecting anything in return. And I'm not hoping that, you know, Spencer is going to be my best friend for life. I did it because I don't want him to say, man, that was a waste of time. I regretted it. Next time Omar asked me for my time, I'm going to say no. I'm going to show him at least I appreciate him that much to think of him and get him a gift because I hope that he'll answer my calls in the future and we can continue to have a relationship. That's my hope. If it doesn't happen, that's still okay. Again, I'm looking at the long term results and you got to keep doing this over and over and over and look at the aggregate results in terms of the quality of your relationships. It's not tit for tat. It's improving the quality of your relationships with your customers, with your clients, with your partnerships.