On the House
In the late eighties the Italian newspaper La Stampa ran a story that people in Palermo told as a joke. Outside the palace of Prince Lanza di Trabia, a French aristocrat had an expensive fur coat and a precious necklace stolen. The next day they brought her nine fur coats and nine necklaces: take your pick. Hers weren’t among them. The thief turned out to be a freelancer, and she had to wait. That was exactly why Palermo didn’t like freelancers: they spoil the service. A few days later the necklace turned up with a fence, and the coat a year later, in another city. Word had been put out all over the district, and the things were handed in as soon as they surfaced.
Gambetta, who tells the story, says it plainly: this is advertising. Mafiosi often do small services for free. Getting back a stolen handbag, settling a quarrel between neighbours, helping an old woman. They don’t take money for it. But, as Gambetta writes, a service like that works like a free wine tasting: it shows what a man can do, strengthens his name and, while it’s at it, makes the authorities who couldn’t find the necklace look helpless. And it leaves behind an unspecified debt that somebody will remember one day.
Free Means for Something
Nothing sells like a treat. A man has tasted it, and now he knows what you’re talking about. He doesn’t need to take your word for it. He’s checked for himself. A free taste removes the buyer’s main fear: “what if it’s not the right thing?”
But remember two things.
The first. What you give away has to show what people will pay for later. If you treat people to a wine you don’t sell, you’re just buying the neighbours drinks. When Don Vincenzo started selling oil, he left a new restaurant one tin free, for a week. Not a little bottle to try, but a tin, so the cook had time to fry a hundred portions in it and understand the difference himself. He never gave more than one. A cook who had fried in our oil for a week never went back to the market stuff.
The second. There are two kinds of free, and they’re as different as day and night. One is a taste: try it and decide for yourself, you owe nothing. The other is a gift with a hook: “don’t mention it, we’ll settle up later”. Our people lived by the second. The unspecified debt Gambetta writes about is a powerful thing, but it poisons. A client you’ve done a “favour” doesn’t know when or how he’ll have to pay for it, and deep down he’s afraid of you. A client you’ve given an honest taste isn’t afraid of you. He comes back.
The Right to Approach
Now about how people agree to listen to you at all.
At the end of 1976 Agent Pistone began his work in New York at the bar of Carmello’s, a restaurant on York Avenue where men of the Genovese family gathered. He couldn’t walk up to their table: these people talk only to those they know or those someone has vouched for. So for two months he simply went there for dinner. He noticed that after dinner the regulars played backgammon for money at the bar. He didn’t know backgammon. He bought a book and learned. A rare case where, against the Mafia, a textbook did more than a pistol. At Christmas, when the bar was crowded and festive, he challenged one of the weaker players, won one game, lost the second and came out even. And that, as he tells it, was when the ice broke: for the first time somebody called him by his name. A couple of weeks later two or three of them were already saying hello.
Look at the craft in this. Pistone didn’t push himself on anyone. He found a way to become a man people talk to of their own accord, and he got a permission that can’t be bought: they began to notice him because they chose to. After that he could talk.
Your clients are sick of people who barge in on them uninvited too. A call out of the blue, a leaflet under the door, a pushy shop assistant. Attention like that makes a man want only one thing: to wave it away. But the one who helped once, the one you called in yourself, the one who sent you something useful when you asked for it—that one gets a willing hearing. Earn the right to talk. Ask permission to write, to call, to bring news. If you’ve been given it, look after it and don’t abuse it. If they’ve stopped answering, the right has been taken back. Don’t force the door.
The Hook
Every offer needs one phrase that a man will remember and repeat. For Pistone, the hook was backgammon: to them he was the guy who plays. For our laundry, “Shirt by Tonight”. For the oil, “this year’s”. Short, concrete, about the main benefit. If you can’t say what you’re good at in one sentence, nobody will say it for you.
The Call to Action
And one last thing, where almost everyone trips up. You’ve given a treat, earned the right to talk, told him the main thing—and you part ways. He liked it, but he did nothing. Because you didn’t tell him what to do.
Don Vincenzo never ended a conversation with an empty “give us a call”. He told the cook: “Fry with it for a week. On Monday morning I’ll drop by, and you’ll tell me how many tins to put you down for. If you don’t like it, I’ll take back what’s left and won’t charge you a thing.” What to do, when, what happens next, what happens if it goes badly. The man walked away with a clear next step and no fear of getting it wrong.
Tell the client one action, simple and concrete, and take away the risk of taking it. He’ll do the rest himself, if you were honest in the first three steps.