Can I do you a Favor?

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In John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable laws of leadership the 2^nd law is Influence.

To dig deeper into Influence, for the next few weeks I want to share with you guys the major topics from the book Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini.

Robert Cialdini is a psychologist who studied marketing and sales professionals to understand why they were so successful.

He learned that we all have certain automatic/ unconscious responses to our environment.

As he calls them, “click-run” responses.

For example, they ran an experiment where someone asked to cut in line at the copier at work.

About 30% of time they were allowed to cut those in front of them when asking, “Can I use the copier?”

When they shifted the question to include the word “because” the participants were able to cut in line around 90% of the time.

Even when there was no good reason following the word because the compliance rate was still around 90% of the time.

The question they used was, “Can I use the copier because I need to use the copier?”

Robert Cialdini dives deep into the major “click-run” responses throughout the rest of the books.

Today, we’ll start with the first rule of Influence.

The Rule of Reciprocity:

The rule of reciprocity is the idea that if someone does us a favor we are more likely to do them a favor in return.

The example Dr. Cialdini uses to illustrate this is the point is his Coke can experiment.

He had a group of art students take a museum tour, one of the students (actually a research assistant) bought a can of coke and got another for a fellow student.

At the end of the tour the research assistant posing as a student would ask the group if they would like to buy a raffle ticket.

The student who received the can of coke gift were more likely to buy a raffle ticket than those who didn’t receive the gift.

Dr. Cialdini explains that when someone does us a favor, not matter how big or small, we have a sense of obligation to repay them.

Generally, people don’t like the sense of indebtedness to someone else and repaying them is our way to clear that debt.

He theorizes this is an evolutionary adaptation we have as humans to avoid social obfuscation.

One of the interesting aspects about this rule is that the favor does not have to be asked for.

By doing a favor for somebody without them asking for it creates the same sense of obligation that would come if they had asked for it.

It is important to separate the favor/ gift from the eventual ask.

Knowing this rule, people often fall into the trap of doing favors for people specifically to get something out of the other person.

It can come off as a scam or as salesy if the favor seems connected to the ask. So when you apply this in your life keep in mind how you can separate the two.

Often letting some time pass will work to separate them.

This is a powerful technique many marketers use.

If you are familiar with the idea of lead magnets in marketing, they capitalize of the rule of reciprocity.

(If you are not familiar, think free samples, free template, free checklist, free consultation, etc.)

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