The Pros and Cons of Giving Away Services Turning Samples of Your Services into Sales Giving Away Services to Build Client Loyalty? Giving the Store Away

Opportunism is fascinating. One of my favorite examples resides in a fantasy I had one summer in Nantucket, where a current style was for clothes died with fabrics that faded when washed. Big fad for several years. All bore the label "Guaranteed to fade." I had this fantasy of a fabric importer who discovered that a batch of cloth he'd just purchased faded easily. He and his partner brooded about getting stuck with it until they came up with the idea. A label that said, "Guaranteed to fade." It went, as they say, like hotcakes.

I had the same thought about the current marketing fad that begins with giving stuff for free to entice buyers to pay for the high-priced stuff. It's particularly good for products. And it's very popular now—giving away books, articles, etc.—as if the concept had been invented yesterday. It wasn't. It's old as the Neanderthals.

And every so often, in a particular area of a professional practice, somebody gets the bright idea to give samples—to give a half hour of free advice as a way to entice a prospective client to ask for more.

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