John Ruhlin

Mar 26, 2019

Episode 27 features John Ruhlin the author of a fantastic book called Giftology, the art of gifting in business and how it can win new relationships and maintain your existing relationships.

John Ruhlin is the world’s leading authority in maximising customer loyalty through radical generosity. He is the founder and author of Giftology and has been featured in Fox News, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc and New York Times and appeared on podcasts such as Pat Flynn, Lewis Howes and The Art of Charm. While becoming the #1 performer out of 1.5 million sales reps for one of the world’s most recognisable brands, John developed a system of using generosity to gain access to elite clients and generate thousands of referrals. He and his firm now help automate this process for individuals and organisations like UBS, Raymond James, DR Horton, Keller Williams, the Chicago Cubs, and Caesar’s Palace. John and the Giftology team can help any individual turn their clients into their own personal sales force to drive exponential growth.

Some of the topics discussed in this episode:

 

• How John won business with The Chicago Cubs by sending them gifts for 6 1/2 years. They eventually reached out to him and led to an amazing story and results for the team, their business and fans
• Why gifting is the long game
• The book changed his current relationships as people were really wowed by the contents
• He is best friends with Hal Elrond, author of "The Miracle Morning", who was one of the people who helped motivate John to get the book done
• The 5 year launch for the book that involved doing something book related every week for those 5 years
• Good gifting leads to active loyalty, which is far better than passive loyalty, but most people don’t even realise they have a loyalty problem
• Giftology leads to reciprocity. Helps you show your appreciation for business and personal relationships
• He grew up a farm boy one of 6 kids in Ohio and originally wanted to be a doctor. Got a job selling knives for Cutco pocket knives which changed his life.
• How a girlfriends dad taught him the power of taking care of the inner circle
• Many gifts lead to the wrong results, bad ROI and low costs per impression:
  John explains what costs per impression means and the importance of it to you getting future business
  John has gifts he gave 15 years ago that are still giving active loyalty to him and gaining him new business all these years later because of high costs per impression
• “In business most people do gifting because they’re having an event or its Xmas and they want to check the box and to me thats a waste of money. You’re not gonna get any ROI out of that and it’s a waste of money.”
• Great advice for speakers and Thought Leaders
• 80% of budget to take care of 20% of relationships  - for most people 80% of revenue comes from 20% of clients
• Its not about how much you spend, its about how much value will it give to the people that receive it
• What gifts should you giveaway at trade shows? Listen to Johns insightful and maybe surprising answer
• Why women are so much better at giving gifts than men

 

“In 40 years of business the reason I have more referrals and access and engagement with my relationships is I found out one simple truth; If your take care of the family, in business everything else seems to take care of itself” - this was John’s lightning bolt moment

He still sells millions of dollars worth of knives

 

The giftology recipe, which is about taking care of the inner circle, people that aren’t able to see the reasons for that aren’t a client John wants to work with, because John knows they won’t get the results that john gets for his customers

 

Targeted Jeffrey Gitomer - John met him and started sending him monthly gifts for 18 months -all personalised knives with personalised messages until Jeffrey eventually said to him:

“John you’re the most pleasantly persistent mofo. I’m not gonna guarantee anything but if you fly out here I’ll hang out with you for a couple of hours and we’ll see where that leads “ he became a raving fan , interviewed John on his podcast, did videos for him, referred him to his clients and generally endorse him and sends John messages occasionally such as

“It’s 6am and I didn’t even wanna think about you, but I’m using one of your stupid knives to cut up an apple and my girlfriend thinks you’re amazing and keeps talking about you all the time and I feel like I’m sleeping with your sales rep!”

 

By sending gifts with the clients wife’s initials on them, he got their wives to become a raving fan and won him business. Referrals went up 110% for the clients business and the only that changed was by targeting the inner circles of his clients with personalised gifts.

 

 

“Very often the people that win in business are the people that are liked, trusted and top of mind”

 

Top 10 list of the things to avoid if you want active loyalty:

Www.thegiversedge.com download that paper for free

 

Giftologygroup.com - a course on there called “Referrals without asking”

 

More information at:

 

 

More information at:

https://tonywinyard.com/ee027-john-ruhlin/

 

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