the reciprocity book i should have read years ago

a few days ago a ceo listened to me explain how we do outreach, and the first thing out of his mouth was homework.

"first of all, if you've never read cialdini's work, the power of influence, you need to get that book."

he's been around. he sold a previous company on the strength of its systems, runs a home builder now, and he's moving toward retirement and writing about leadership. he doesn't hand out book recommendations to be polite.

his point was simple. the thing i've been doing on instinct for years already has a name in the research. reciprocity.

if you've never read it, the reciprocity principle in sales is the idea that people feel a pull to give back when you give them something first. cialdini built a whole career showing how strong that pull is.

and that's the model. i don't email someone asking for a meeting. i invite them on the show to talk about what they know. they get a spotlight, an episode, a page with their story on it. then somewhere in the debrief they ask what i do.

i never ask. the give does the asking.

he loved it. but he didn't stop at the compliment, and that's why i'm writing this.

he told me i was pointing it at the wrong people.

i'd been talking about venture backed app founders. his read was that a founder like that will never run regular webinars or fill a calendar with conversations. the give lands, but they don't have a machine to catch what comes back.

the people who do are leadership consultants. their whole business is filling rooms. they run webinars, workshops, roundtables, and they turn those into paid consulting. for them, "this is a great way to go from a cold to a warm lead, for sure."

that's reciprocity with a second layer most people miss. the give works best when the person receiving it can turn it into something. you don't just give. you give to someone whose business runs on exactly what you're handing them.

it's like gifting a cookbook. to someone who never cooks it's a nice shelf ornament. to someone who runs a supper club it's next month's menu, and they'll remember who gave it to them.

he's living it himself, by the way. he built his own little app to grow his leadership newsletter. it pulls articles in, drafts responses trained on his book, and he hired two people to manage the drafts. fifty eight to sixty subscribers in the first two or three weeks. small numbers, but he's giving something useful every week to exactly the people he wants to reach.

and then he did the most cialdini thing possible. he offered to refer me from his newsletter connections, most of them leadership consultants.

i hadn't asked. he gave first. now i'm the one who owes.

i'll admit it stung a little. i'd been running the playbook for years and somebody had written the textbook decades ago. but that's the gift too. now i can stop defending the idea on instinct and point at the research.

and the bigger gift was the correction about who it's for. compliments are nice. a sharper target is worth money.

long term this is the only outreach that gets stronger as ai makes asking cheaper. every inbox is drowning in asks. the scarce thing is a reason to say yes, and a gift is the oldest reason there is.

if you want the long version of how i use this, it's in the spotlight... free, no form.

so who in your world fills rooms for a living... and what could you give them before you ever ask for a thing?