What You Give Away Says More Than What You Charge

A few weeks ago, as I was rushing towards the exit doors of Leeds train station, keen to get to my meeting on time, a guy in a branded uniform held out a bottle of cold pre-mixed coffee to me. With a warm smile and a tray full of product, he'd clearly clocked I was dashing.

"Here you go, take one of these - there's skinny, original or caramel, which would you like to try?"

Oh how nice, was my first thought. I selected the skinny option, took the free sample, said thank you and kept walking.

After my meetings, I drank the coffee; it was really delicious. But it wasn't the taste, the quality of the product or its branding that got my attention at this point. What I couldn't stop thinking about was the decision behind the gift of the free sample.

Because someone, somewhere in that business, had signed off on giving thousands of premium products away to strangers with no guarantee of anything in return. No data capture. No discount code. No "scan this to register." Just a gift and a smile at a busy barrier on a Tuesday morning.

For a well-established brand with real market share, that's not generosity. It's a calculated commercial act. They're not trying to build awareness - they already have it. What they're doing is something quieter and more interesting. They're depositing goodwill into the subconscious of people who, three days later, will be standing in front of a supermarket fridge deciding between five similar products. And the brand that made them feel good for no reason will have a small but real advantage in that moment.

It's a long game. And there are plenty of growing businesses I notice have stopped playing it.

I understand why. When every decision has a cost attached and the spreadsheet is watching, giving something away without a visible return feels impossible to justify. Especially when you can't point to the data. Especially when the next quarter is the priority. The logic of conditional generosity - I'll give when I can measure what I get back - makes complete sense when you're under pressure and navigating so many real business trading challenges.

But there's a cost to that too. It just doesn't show up on the same spreadsheet.

The businesses I find most commercially resilient tend to have something in common. They give things away with some regularity and without expectation. Not recklessly. Not naively. But with an understanding that the return on genuine generosity is real - it just arrives on a different timeline and shows up in different places. In referrals that come from nowhere obvious. In relationships that warm before any formal conversation takes place. In the kind of reputation that means people already trust you before you've had to earn it.

There's a difference between giving strategically and giving transactionally.

Transactional giving is dressed-up sales. The free consultation that's really a pitch. The complimentary review that comes with a proposal attached. People can sense the condition attached to it. It creates obligation rather than warmth and the two things are not the same.

Strategic giving - the kind that builds something lasting - tends to be quieter. A connection made because it's the right thing, not because there's an obvious return. A piece of thinking shared without a gate. A conversation offered without an agenda. Time given to someone who can't yet pay for it, because the relationship has potential that isn't yet visible in commercial terms.

This is the part that's hard to put in a business case. It requires a belief that the commercial bottom line is partly built from things that don't appear on it directly.

I've operated this way for most of my career. Not always consciously. But looking back, the opportunities that have mattered most - the introductions that led somewhere, the clients, customers and accounts who came back, the relationships that compounded over years - almost none of them started with a transaction. They started with something given freely.

The question worth thinking about isn't whether your business can afford to be generous. It's whether you can afford the version of your business that isn't.

What are you giving away right now - not because you have to, but because you've decided the longer return justifies it? And if the honest answer is nothing, it might be worth asking when that changed and what it's quietly costing you.

The Commercial Truth works with founder-led businesses to identify where commercial friction is getting in the way of healthier growth. If something isn't working as well as it should, it's usually worth a conversation.