The Law of Reciprocity

“A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall”
– Abraham Lincoln

This quote by Abraham Lincoln really resonates with me. What does it mean? It means that if you want someone to like you, you have to like them first. So, how do we like people, or how do we show people that we like them? We give. We give of our time, our expertise, even a gift, heck just a smile or even being nice to someone is sometimes all it will take.

I relate this to the Law of Reciprocity and it works 100% of the time. Similar to the law of gravity, whether you believe in gravity or not, if you step off a 24-story building in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, or New York, you’re going to meet the same end by going splat on the sidewalk, the law of reciprocity is no different. If you give your time, give your expertise, give free information, and give gifts, people will innately feel indebted to you in some way, shape, or form and they will want to give back.

The wonderful thing about our business is that we get literally dozens and dozens of opportunities to give.

Consider this, how much money do we spend at our offices? If you look at our lavish offices, most of us are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. How many clients come to our offices these days? Sadly, the answer is very few. How many people come to the home opens? Literally thousands every year.

Now ask yourself this, how much money are you spending at your home opens? Little to zero I bet. As an industry, we need to start spending a whole lot of money at our home opens giving people who come through the door, total strangers, gifts. Whether it be a cupcake, a macaroon, a barista coffee, it doesn’t matter, as long as you are giving some form of gift.

Now I hear you asking how this is going to work for you? Well, when you go asking for their details after they’ve received their gift they are certainly going to be happy to give them to you. When you ask them if you can call them that evening between 5:00 and 6:30, they’re going to be happy to answer the phone. When you talk to them between 5:00 and 6:30, they’re going to be happy to give you feedback.

The key is to build trust in a quick way, and the quickest and easiest way to build trust is to give somebody a small gift or something of value.

Again, I can feel some of you rolling your eyes. Some of you out there are going to say that it’s patronising or perhaps that it’s cheesy. However, the reality is, that it’s not. If you’re genuinely giving something out of the goodness of your heart, people will respond to that because nobody else out there does it.

To start you off, I’ve created the Law of Reciprocity system that you can download, where I go over the best opportunities you will have where you can evoke the Law of Reciprocity.

Want to learn more about the Law of Reciprocity and the opportunities you will get where you can give gifts? Register for my upcoming FREE half-day Real Estate Brilliance webinar, where I’ll cover this topic and many others in far more detail.