049: John Ruhlin - The Strategic Way to Use Gifting

Scaling Up Business Podcast

John Ruhlin is the author of GIFTOLOGY: The Art & Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through The Noise & Drive Referrals and founder of the Ruhlin Group. There’s an art and science to using gifts to cut through the noise, and drive real referrals to your business. In this episode, John discusses how to use gifts to scale your business and increase referrals.

John was a young, broke college kid who took a job at Cutco to hopefully pay his way through college. Fortunately at the time, John knew a lawyer outside of work who had the ‘secrets of business’ figured out, and, with his help and philosophy, John invented the first corporate gifting program for Cutco. The lawyer taught him this: If you can take care of your client’s family, everything else in business seems to work itself out.

However, just gifting out a basket of fruit during Christmas is not going to help you cut through the noise. There’s a method to how and when you should gift. Want to know what’s considered a bad gift? Anything involving food. It doesn’t stand out! Gifting alcohol is not far up there, either. If you want to quickly offend somebody, give them food and alcohol.

When people gift, they’re not looking at it as an ROI. They really should. When you spend money, you should get money back. In old biblical times, gifting represented the value of the relationship. It’s more than just a ‘thank you’, it’s a communication tool.

Interview Links: Giftologybook.comRuhlingroup.com

More Resources:Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you growing. Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Business Website

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Scaling Up is the best-selling book, by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher with Humanisteq Coaching and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).