This is the fifth in a six-part series on influence and persuasion, loosely based on Dr Robert Cialdini’s work.
This rule is one of the most important, and applies to every culture.
It’s a quirk of human nature that if someone does you a favour, you feel obliged to return that favour — even if you don’t like them. The Favour Bank has strict policies and procedures.
In fact, you can often get a ‘yes’ to requests that, except for them feeling they ‘owe’ you, would almost certainly have been refused. And you can harness these conditioned feelings of fairness when writing to people.
Make it win-win
But check your attitude — this shouldn’t be about manipulation, but a demonstration of your desire to help your clients. As famous motivational speaker and sales trainer, Zig Ziglar, said, ‘You can get everything in life you want, if you just help enough other people get what they want.’
You can invoke reciprocity through gifts and/or concessions:
1. GIFTS: Give, and it shall be given unto you
So what can you give your readers to increase your ‘favour-bank’ balance? Here are some ideas:
- Free samples of your product/service (but be generous – it must seem more a gift, not a cheap commercial sample)
- Articles, facts or websites you think will interest them (you could set up some Google Alerts for relevant topics)
- Quality promotional items with your branding. (Sometimes these assume a life of their own, e.g. the Pirelli Tyres limited-edition celebrity calendars)
- Greeting cards or handwritten notes, e.g. congratulating them on a win, End-of-Financial-Year, birthdays, Christmas, etc. Here’s a great way to send funky personalised notes.
- Tickets to movies or sporting events
2. CONCESSIONS: To get ahead, step back
Perhaps surprisingly, making a concession to someone is perceived as a favour.
In one experiment, people were asked if they’d take juvenile-detention centre inmates to the zoo for a day. Only 17 per cent said yes.
But when people were FIRST asked if they’d volunteer to be a counsellor at a juvenile-detention centre for two hours a week for two years – to which ALL said ‘no’ – and THEN were asked the ‘zoo-for-a-day’ question, those who said ‘yes’ to the zoo trip rocketed to 50 per cent, three times better than before.
To apply this, when you’re asking for something big, have a ‘fallback’ question ready. For example, if your ‘big’ request for a face-to-face meeting is rejected, immediately ask for something small, like a phone call.
Don’t thank me
Cialdini also talks about ‘moments of power’: situations in which you momentarily have elevated influence. One of those is when someone thanks you. If you help someone, it’s tempting to dismiss their thanks with, ‘No problem.’
But Cialdini says you can build your favour bank by replying with something like, ‘You’re welcome; I’m sure if the tables were turned, you’d do the same for me’ — thereby gently reminding them of their ‘debt’ to you. Naturally, be authentic and sincere (see ‘Make it win-win’ above!).
What do you think? Does this work for you, or does it sound too manipulative? Air your thoughts below!
7 thoughts on “The power of give & take: Cialdini’s ‘Reciprocity’”
Warning: I recently “suffered” someone’s attempt to apply this principle. This person got it so wrong, it created the opposite effect in me. At a well known body’s networking event my business card got drawn and I ‘won’ a so-called grant worth a large amount of money – thousands of dollars worth as was announced to all present. When I committed to an hour long webinar to learn the inside-outs of this prize I won, I discovered (only in the last 10 minutes) that to actually benefit from this prize, I have to pay an additional hundreds of dollars per month. I had no intention or need to engage in the field the grant was given when I arrived at the networking event, and I now feel I should not have placed my card in the bowl at all. It felt almost like someone told me one day “Congratulations! You won a brand new car!” The next day when I went to collect the prize, I was told: “You can only look at a picture of it. To actually drive it, you have to pay a large monthly fee.” Message: Law of reciprocity only works when managed accurately and well.
Rolene, that’s a shocker – how unethical! Sorry to hear that. Cialdini calls people like this ‘bunglers’ because they bungle the opportunity they had to influence. I’m sure you’ll always consider that company in a negative light.
Great word for that: BUNGLER.
It’s interesting re the above suggested response to “thank you”. To me, it’s a bit long-winded and could be perceived as condescending. There has been some linkedin discussions about this and I like someone’s suggestion about passing the favour on. For instance, “I’m sure you’d do the same for others”. In this response, it is not only humble but could also potentially widen your circle of influence. Thoughts?
That’s a good point, Paul. It might seem a bit long-winded, but then you could shorten it to something like, ‘You’re welcome. You’d do the same for me.’
It doesn’t strike me as condescending but this could depend very much on tone – HOW it’s said. Saying it intensely when you’re staring them in the eye with a straight face might seem weird! However, in the Australian vernacular I can imagine someone smiling and almost laughing it off as they say it. They’d say it in a very light, almost joking way. Still, message delivered.
As to whether saying, ‘I’m sure you’d do the same for others’ would work, I’m unsure. It might in some cultures. But I wonder if saying that might dilute the intended effect, which is to build YOUR favour bank.
It’s interesting to consider, though. I saw something recently about incentives for employees (although I can’t find it now): Team spirit was much stronger when teams were given cash rewards to buy gifts for OTHERS in their team rather than for themselves. You could be onto something!
Hi , the response to Thank You is interesting. Turning it on its head , how do we respond when someone says ‘I’m sorry.’ There must be a ‘give and take’ solution to gain influence. Any thoughts? Thank you. Oh lol.
I like how you think, Peter. But I’m unsure if there’s any ‘moment of power’ following someone saying ‘I’m sorry’ to us. Reciprocation works on the favour-bank principle; if someone says ‘thanks,’ it’s because they ‘owe’ us for something – we’ve done something for them, and our favour-bank balance is increased. But if they say ‘sorry’ to us for something, is our favour-bank balance increased? I’d say not.
Perhaps it depends on the situation. For example, if we’ve paid for something, then we have a problem with it and the provider says ‘sorry,’ they DO ‘owe’ us something: either a refund or a replacement product/service. But that really goes without saying. We don’t need to remind them of their ‘debt’ to us; it’s an unfinished transaction. What do you think?