Why generosity is good business practice

Recently we have initiated 2 very generous gifts. Firstly we are gifting every one of our existing gold members and our new gold members, a Quick Start List Building pack, delivered to your door. This will cost us thousands of dollars just to produce and deliver (not to mention the value of the product and the intellectual property).

We are also offering all new gold members the opportunity to take GOLD membership for a test run for just $1 for the first month – and we still send you our gift in the post. You may be wondering why we are doing this. I’d like to share with you the business reasoning behind our generosity in this artilce.I believe in being very transparent about how we run our business. For 2 reasons: 

•  the first reason is that you are not a fool. There is so much hype around where people say things like “this is my gift to  you because I am so wonderful and this is a sacrifice I am making just for you”. Sure, generosity is an important part of business (and it is the key-stone of our business model) but it must always be backed with sound business principles. I would much rather be open about how generosity is good business practice and hopefully inspire others to risk generosity.
• the second reason is I really hope to help you grow a profitable business. That is what Wonderful Web Women is all about. Like you (I hope anyway), we trial an initiative then analyse it to see if it works. Some things work and others don’t but if you don’t measure things you will never know. I hope you can learn from my mistakes and successes (hopefully more successes).

The business rationale behind our generosity

Generosity is such a powerful concept in business yet you must always remember you are in business. There is no use being generous if your generosity makes you broke. You’re not helping anyway if you are not around to continue to provide a service. That is why we have a rationale behind every generous  act we do in business (apart from it gives us incredible satisfaction). 

So, what are our business rationales for our 2 most recent generous acts?

Why spend thousands of dollars gifting a physical product?

The  gift we send all our gold members is incredibly valuable. If used, it will actually help you build a list and start making money quickly. We want to help you to make money quickly so you can afford to stay a gold member of Wonderful Web Women. And, if you make the most of the resources we send you to be an affiliate of Wonderful Web Women, you will refer even more customers our way. So see, by helping you succeed, you help us to succeed. It’s a win-win.

The only reason this will not work in our business model is if you take no action. That’s always a risk and that is why we will analyse the cost of this campaign against our income, and decide if it worked or not. So, we’re taking a risk on you taking action. 

Why give access to thousands of dollars of product for just $1

Again this is a big risk. New gold members only have to pay $1 and we send out a gift that costs us a lot of money. So we are making a loss in that first month. So why do it? We intend to knock the socks off our new gold members so they see how valuable gold membership is. If they can only sample how good we are, they will never want to leave. So that’s the risk we take.

The first risk is that people won’t just sign up and cancel a day later, just so they can get their gift (believe it or not people have done this and left thousands of dollars of downloadable MP3s and transcripts untouched).

The second risk is that we aren’t good enough and people won’t stay.
Which brings me to my next point………

Why membership sites are such an ethical way to do business.

Have you heard the hype about membership sites? You know, the one where you do all the work at the beginnning and then get paid every month and do no more work? What rubbish. Sure, most of the work is at the beginning but a good membership site, one that is truly a community, means that you always have to give great value. I really like this as a business model because if you have high integrity, and give excellent value and customer service, you will rewarded highly with loyal customers. If your standards slip, you will quickly see that you are doing something wrong because your members will unsubscribe. It keeps you honest and in my books, if you don’t intend to give exceptional service, why are you in business anyway?

I’m really interested in your reaction to this honesty.

In our business we have 2 guiding motivations:

1. Help people achieve their dreams and be financially independent

2. Achieve our own dreams and be financially independent

I see the best way to do this is to be incredibly generous, based on sound business principles.

What do you think?

Cheers

Janet