Don't Forget to Thank Your Clients!

Susan Clements

Executive Director, E-Myth Benchmark

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Danke! Gracias! Hartelijk Dank! Arigatou! Shukran! Thank You!

Whether you say it in German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Arabic, or English, saying “thank you” is easy––the hard part is designing your business to ensure your clients feel you appreciate their business all year long.

Showing appreciation for your clients can increase loyalty, improve retention, inspire referrals, and build relationships that last a lifetime. Intentionally reaching out to your clients will remind them that you are working on their behalf and attentive to their individual needs. 

Sending greeting cards for holidays, birthdays, new babies, and get-well wishes is a familiar and reliable way of personally connecting with your clients. As you focus on ways to show your clients they’re important to you and your business, think about how some of these additional strategies can be incorporated into your business:

• Send a personal note instead of an e-mail. There’s nothing like “snail mail” to demonstrate that you care. When following up with a client after a conversation or meeting, keep the informational and business language in an e-mail but place the “thanks” in a personal note. An unexpected and personal note of appreciation or thanks will let your clients know you truly care about them.  

• While seemingly “plain vanilla,” gift cards are a great way to send an unexpected show of appreciation outside of the holiday season. When a gift card comes out of the blue, for no apparent reason other than you truly appreciate your client, you will make a big impression. The options are also endless: movies, restaurants, bookstores, gasoline, coffee shops, and big box stores are all welcome and useful gifts.

•  Make a list of your top tier clients and select two or three face-time connections with them over the next year. Consider taking a client to a sporting event, concert, networking event, short lunch, or luxurious dinner––whichever fits their personality and your relationship. Time spent outside of your normal business interactions will enable you to get to know them better, create a stronger relationship, and ultimately help you better meet their needs. 

• Everyone loves food. Find a unique food product to surprise your clients with. I like Chocolatarie Stam, www.stamchocolate.com for their superb chocolate and unique imported food products. Special and unique food products, gift baskets, catered meals, or goodies from a local bakery are sure to put a smile on any client’s face!

• When you think of providing your clients an unexpected surprise, be sure to also consider their family. A gift of tickets to local events, the circus, zoo, water park, amusement park, movies, or sporting events are all fun and surprising ways to show you’re thinking of your client’s entire family. 

• Connections to others and resources is a much appreciated way of expressing you have your client’s best interest in mind. An advisor I work with is a well-known resource for just about anything! He has made it his business to listen and mentally file away all kinds of connections. Not only will he connect his clients with each other to their mutual benefit, he makes a habit of listening for a need and then connecting his clients with anything from business resources to babysitters. If you need to borrow a tool, find a great vacation spot, get your computer fixed, or have your house painted––he’s the resource. It works! He doesn’t hesitate to look for and find resources outside of his profession that help his clients better enjoy their lives.

• Healthy living tips, household tips, gardening tips, vacation tips, and holiday tips are all examples of easily collected information that can be placed on your letterhead or in an e-newsletter and slipped off to clients. Important facts about protecting your credit, understanding your investments, saving money, or managing debt are solid examples of information that will benefit your clients. An insurance agent I work with walks around town once a month dropping off bagged cookies. Tied by a colorful ribbon to the bags are recipe cards with the cookie recipes on one side and recipes for protecting your life, family, and loved ones on the other side.   

• If most of your clients are local, you might consider hosting interesting events or seminars that connect your clients to useful or interesting information they wouldn’t normally have access to. Work with other professionals that plug your clients into additional resources. Seminars that address issues such as supporting aging parents, community volunteer opportunities, or local history are well-received and don’t have to be long.  Events such as walking tours of historic districts, wine tastings, or cooking classes can be fun and memorable. Use your imagination.

Say Thank-You, and say it often! The habit of saying “thanks” to your clients––and saying it often––is a habit that will encourage loyalty and elicit a feeling of being appreciated.

Designing your business to let your clients know you don’t take their business for granted is quite simply, good business. The cost of acquiring a new client is far more than the cost of keeping the client you have. December is a good time to examine how you and your business intentionally expressed your appreciation to your clients over the past year and to create your client appreciation strategies for next year. 

Susan Clements is Executive Director and co-owner of E-Myth Benchmark, a business coaching company whose clients include Edward Jones and Met Life.  Susan and her team can help you steer your business through growth initiatives, sales and marketing strategies, management restructuring, personnel issues, customer service challenges, and help you develop action plans for growth and change. Leveraging her own experience as a business owner and manager of businesses in both the private and public sector, Susan and her team can help you create a results-oriented business through a revolutionary system that results in greater freedom and flexibility.  E-Myth Benchmark provides business coaching, business management and leadership workshops, training and seminars designed for both business owners and their teams.  For more information, contact Susan at www.e-mythcoaching.com or sclements@e-mythcoaching.com.