Monday Morning Jumpstart with Dan Richards

10 minutes to drive your week

Topic for November 9, 2009: Client gifts that stand out

Listen to the interview

1. We all want the things we do to thank and acknowledge clients to stand out and be remembered afterwards – this is harder and harder to do as both we and many of our clients have done it all and seen it all.

2. There are four principles to giving gifts that stand out:

   First, seek to attach yourself to positive moments for clients.

   Second, where possible root the gift in the client's interests and passions – whether it be their hobbies, their families or the charities they support.

   Third, Seek out something that clients will hang on to and which will serve as a continuing reminder of you. In the process, personalize the gift to the client and make it as unique as possible.

   And fourth, make it reflect your own personality and values.

3. The first principle is tapping into positive emotions. One extremely effective strategy is to tap into moments that pack positive emotions for clients such as births, weddings and graduations – and hitch hike on those positive emotions. Do this right and you can make an impact that transcends the amount of money you spend.

   One of the most effective gifts I've come across is given by an advisor whenever his clients have children or grandchildren. He has his assistant clip the birth announcement out of the paper, have it mounted at a local print shop and buy a frame for it; he then sends the framed birth announcement to clients with a note of congratulations.

4. The second strategy is to tap into important clients' hobbies and passions for cooking, gardening, travel, golf or wine to select a gift with impact.

   To make this work, first you have to know your best clients well.

   And second, if possible categorize clients into groups. Sending twenty different gifts to twenty different clients is cumbersome; dividing your key clients into four or five groups is much more workable.

5. The third strategy is selecting gifts with longevity – once you've identified a key client's passion, the next step is to find an effective way to tap into.

   Instead of giving a wine lover a bottle of wine at Christmas, one advisor gives a leather bound binder in which to record the wines consumed and to make notes of the experience. Another advisor gives clients who love to cook a special binder in which to record recipes tried – and how they worked out.

   A senior executive at one of the banks gives friends and clients who love to travel the best selling book 1001 Places to See Before You Die – they use this as a resource to track where they've been and when they're going next; whenever they do so, they're reminded of the gift's source.

6. The final strategy is to reflect your own personality and values

   The key to making this work is that you have to stand out and also have to treat this as an ongoing multi year ongoing commitment.

   One advisor in a mid sized community visits key clients at home in early December to thank them for the opportunity to work together over the past year and to deliver a wreath for their front door – he's become associated with that among his most important clients, who now expect his call each year.

7. Another gift giving strategy can relate to support for charity. More and more clients are involved in charitable giving – and want to work with advisors who share their values.

   Gifts to support third world charities at Christmas can be especially powerful – partly because that's a time of year when we're sensitized to the contrasts in that part of the world, but also because of the impact that a relatively modest amount of money can make.

   One advisor supports an African charity at which a client's son works. A few years ago, he began sending clients a card at Christmas saying that he instead of a Christmas gift he had made a contribution to this charity in their name. Now, clients regularly ask how this charity is doing – he's received a more positive response to this than to any of the Christmas bottles of wines, poinsettias or boxes of chocolates he'd given clients over the years. (In part this may have been because most clients get lots of bottles of wine, poinsettias and chocolates, so that his previous gift had not really stood out .)

   Some advisors "adopt" children through organizations such as Foster Plan International as a thank you to clients and use newsletters to keep clients abreast of how their "kids" are doing.