As I noted in my previous post (Greetings from the Fortune Small Business Growth Conference), I had the good fortune to hear Dr. Robert Cialdini – Professor of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University – speak at the recent Fortune Small Business Growth Conference.

For those who aren’t familiar with Dr. Cialdini, he is the author of a book called Influence (Amazon: Influence: Science and Practice (4th Edition)) that many consider to be the authoritative work on the factors of influence.

During his speech, he covered what he calls the 6 universal principles of influence.  I am going to summarize each one in upcoming posts and give examples of the impact of each in the business world.

First is the Principle of Reciprocity, which states that people feel obligated to give something in return when they have been given something/taken something.

He used several examples to illustrate this concept, but the one that really hit home for me as to how reciprocity can be applied to your business is illustrated here:

A study was done at a chain of restaurants to see what could be done to consistently raise the value of tips given to the wait staff.  The study decided to use mints given to the customers after their meal as their “gift” to try to elicit a response of greater tips.

Three methods of giving the mints were tested:

1. The waiter gave each customer one mint when delivering the check and gave a polite “thank you for dining with us tonight” to the customers.
2. The waiter gave each customer two mints when delivering the check and delivered the same “thank you” to the customers.
3. The waiter gave one mint to each customer when delivering the check and gave the same polite “thank you”, then started to walk away.  After walking a few steps, the waiter returned to the table and said along the lines of “You were such a good table to serve that I’ve decided to give you each an extra mint to say thank you”, and then delivered an additional mint.

So…what do you imagine the results of this study were?  I think you will find them shocking, as I did when I first heard them.  Here they are:

1. The first test resulted in a 3% tip increase.  No bad!
2. The second test resulted in a 13% tip increase.  Fantastic!
3. The third test resulted in a 24% tip increase.  Absolutely amazing!

For the price of a couple of mints and a carefully worded delivery, the waiter was able to increase their average tip by 24%!!!

This is incredible.  Think of the waiter as having his own small busines - which in fact he does.  How much money and effort do you think a business owner would normally expect to have to spend in reengineering of his business processes or new product lines to expect to get a 24% increase in profits on a regular basis?  All it took was a few cents and understanding the Principle of Reciprocity.

This principle can be applied to any business or personal situation with nothing more than a little thoughtfulness and planning.  How will you apply it?