"What's In It For Me?" Lessons From Morocco

Anyone who has visited Marrakesh (Marrakech), Morocco knows that it is a unique destination—and sometimes awkward for Americans. The city is packed with guides who aggressively push their services on foreign tourists. Most tourists instinctively distrust these guides, but understand that Marrakesh’s maze of streets is nearly impossible for foreigners to navigate on their own.

These guides profess to be free, but they are not. When they bring you back to your hotel, they will resort to begging and pleading in order to cajole some currency from your pocket. Even more interesting are the revenue sharing arrangements that they have with local vendors. Don’t be surprised if you end up taking detours to specific carpet shops or other stores where the tourist price is much higher than the price for locals.

This type of arrangement is not unusual in many foreign countries, but it certainly feels foreign to most Americans. The idea of someone pushing us toward a store or product for a commission seems repellant, but this same scenario takes place in the U.S. every day. It’s probably why most Americans have a distaste for salespeople and rank them somewhere between lawyers and politicians in the hierarchy of “the kinds of people we trust”.

If you want to earn trust, stop asking, “What’s in it for me?” Instead, start asking, “What will best serve this client?” Sometimes the answer will be a service or product that you provide. Other times it will not. Instead of trying to push a client into a product or service that’s not a perfect match, consider sending them to a provider that will better serve them, without expecting something in return. This not only builds good will with your clients, but also with the businesses to which you refer them. Good will leads to more referrals to you and a growing business.