What If We Gave It All Away? Build Trust; Build Advocates

Some days everything comes together. 

1. I read a book recently:  The Go-Giver, by Bob Burg and John David Mann.  Wonderful book and a quick read - I read it twice on the plane from Chicago to St. Louis in fact.  The tag line is "A little story about a powerful business idea."  Well worth reading twice. 
2. I was on #socialchat a couple of weeks ago, and the discussion was all about building brand advocates.  As the group got into a discussion about compensating or somehow remunerating brand advocates, I found myself asking why that would be necessary.  My theory:  When you give, you get.  In fact it is the surest way of getting anything worthwhile. 
3. Today, two different tipping points: 
• Never Stop Marketing's post yesterday on "Transparent Marketing," asking the question, What if a company were to actually act in way where it didn't care if everything was public?
• An innocent tweet by @BrentBeshore:  "Getting makes you a living.  Giving makes you a life." 

About nine months ago, at a technology firm, I gave birth to an idea.  "Let's teach people how to use this product better, and let's not charge them.  In fact, let's not sell to them.  Let's just share information."  Someone piped up and said "If we give away the information that makes us uniquely qualified to deliver this solution, we'll be taking money out of our own pockets."  Others seemed to agree.  I suggested that clients, upon sitting in a room for two hours listening to experts share how-to information on a given subject would not suddenly become experts, and in fact, the firm would be creating a community of better-educated users - users who might find out that they need help implementing new features.  It took a little more chatting, but finally the team agreed to try this idea. If it didn't work, after all, they could always stop.

In the nine months since then, the firm has built trust in the marketplace and brand advocates to the extreme.  If this particular type of technology is mentioned in the community, the name of that technology firm is the next thing said.  The team that implements this technology has quadrupled in size, billed revenue has quadrupled, and the firm is being called on to implement this technology all over the country.  It worked.  There was no scorecard and no expectation.  For that reason, it worked.

This is one of many success stories I have experienced and witnessed over the course of my career.  It really does work.  When you give - without a scorecard in your hand, you get.  Show up and help.  Give from your heart.  Give of yourself.  It feels good - and it gets results.

In fact, I'm going to take it one step further than @BrentBeshore did:

Getting makes you a living. 

Giving makes you a living AND a life!

What is your experience?