The Appreciation Advantage: Small Gestures That Win Clients, Earn Referrals

The Appreciation Advantage: Small Gestures That Win Clients, Earn Referrals

In this live session, Gary shares three “old school” appreciation strategies to stand out and grow a business, especially amid inbox overload and AI automation. First, he recommends sending handwritten thank-you cards after prospect meetings, written and addressed by hand with real stamps, explaining how to find addresses via Google Maps or public records and noting this boosts remembrance and follow-up responsiveness. Second, he suggests mailing a small welcome gift (like a local box of chocolates) after new-client onboarding to ease early engagement and improve retention, based on his experience. Third, he discusses sending holiday gifts to current clients, often timed between Christmas and New Year’s, tailored to the recipient (he often sends bourbon), to strengthen loyalty and increase referrals.

Discover:

00:00 Welcome and Holiday Chat
02:52 Agenda and Quick Intro
06:14 Handwritten Thank You Notes
09:13 Finding Addresses and Why It Works
12:59 Onboarding Gift Chocolates
16:50 Holiday Client Gifts and Referrals
21:26 Monaco Vendor Story and Wrap Up
24:07 Q&A and Closing Wishes

Transcript:

[00:00:02] All right. Welcome everybody to today’s live event, the Appreciation Advantage, small gestures that close deals, win new clients, and gain long-term referrals. So appreciate everybody taking some time outta their day. I know with Thanksgiving coming up here, here in the United States. You’re probably pretty busy.

You’re either trying to put out a bunch of fires, you get ready to take some time off, or you’re already in, you know, vacation shopping mode and that the holidays have have fully set in. So I do appreciate you hopping on with me here today. So. while we’re waiting for people to, to hop on, I just wanna give a chance for notifications to go out, let people know that we are in fact live here.

I see a few people hopping on already, but in the meantime, what is your favorite Thanksgiving food item? and why is it cranberry sauce in a can? Not that good Homemade stuff. The stuff that jiggly stuff that’s in a can. No, I, I would actually say mine is probably pumpkin pie. and it’s one of those things I only want it once a year.

I want it after the Thanksgiving Day meal. I want my slice of pumpkin pie with some whipped cream on top. And then the next morning for breakfast, I want one more slice, and then I don’t wanna touch it again until the next year. Like, that’s, that’s how I like it. It’s great. And then I, I don’t, I don’t need it again.

But you know what, what is your favorite? Must have one that you, always wanna see on the. On the table.

I know, like the first year, you know, with my, my wife and I were still dating, my now mother-in-law. When we were doing the first Thanksgiving with them, she was like, oh, what are, what are your, your must have Thanksgiving items? And, you know, she, she was like, I was like, I really like the cranberry sauce.

I think that’s, you know, good. so she took the time to go through and. you know, made the nice homemade one and, you know, it was, it was fine. but, I, it subtly, kind of let her know. I was like, I’m just good with the stuff in a can. and I, you know, obviously trying not to hurt anybody’s feelings.

I was like, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t need the, the super fancy stuff. let’s see. So Evan, Evan says, for him, it’s, it’s stuffing. You know, I mean, it is, it is hard to go wrong with a good, good stuffing. we got pie for sure. I see it. Oh, ev everyone interesting. Your ants. Filipino spaghetti sounds really interesting.

Rad. No, great to have you here today. sausage stuffing sounds tasty. Good gravy. I mean, good, good gravy. Just, it just goes on everything right. Well, good deal. Well appreciate everybody. hopping on 

[00:02:51] today. it is 2 0 2, so I don’t wanna keep everybody waiting for everybody who did, in fact show up, on time.

today’s session’s gonna be probably a little bit shorter than most of them, probably 20, 30 minutes or so. just kind of three strategies I wanna share with you, kind of in the spirit of giving thanks is just some, some strategies I’ve found that. Given thanks, actually, you know, helps work to, to, you know, build, build the business and is one of those things that’s not a waste of time and, and makes a difference.

So, let’s, let’s jump into it here. I’m gonna move my camera around here just a little bit so I get the right, slideshows. Here we go. So. Agenda today. like I said, not too much. We’re gonna talk about, something you can do after meetings with a, a new prospect. Something you can do after a new client onboarding.

And then ones you can do right about right around Christmas or just after Christmas is when I tend, tend to do mine. No AI automations, something, some things that are small and just take a little bit of time. Real quick. The 32nd version of the About Me is I’m the founder of Pipelineology, and host of the Pipelineology podcast.

By the way, I’ve got, I think I’ve got two, two recording slots open in December. If you are interested in being a guest on the show, we’ve been publishing a bunch of new episodes lately, and it’s been, it’s been fun, but having some great conversations. So, yep, I’ve got, two room for two more in December.

Otherwise I’ll be after the new year when we, we get them recorded. I’ve been doing marketing, I guess marketing for 24 years now. It’s been a while. in my corporate career I actually, ran, marketing department and then ran, eventually ran call centers for car dealerships. these days now I work a lot with consultants and, you know, small startups and, and companies that are.

Much on the much smaller side of things, helping them, you know, fill their sales pipeline, get meetings with the right people, at the right companies. and last night, for the first time I decided to try making homemade eggnog. my wife and I, there’s a YouTube channel called Tasting History with Max Miller.

Really good channel, really interesting. And, he had done a video on. On, on eggnog. He’s done two videos actually on it. This is one from, A Riot in the early 18 hundreds at West Point. so I thought, oh, we’re gonna, we’re gonna have to give that a try. And I know my father-in-law really likes it, so we’re gonna bring it down for, for Thanksgiving and, and see how it turned out.

It’s, it’s really boozy, so we’ll see. See if it’s good. This is the, this is the first time I’ve ever tried making it. Normally it’s just been one of those, oh, shows up in a, in a jug. and it’s, it’s okay. It’s okay. So we’ll see if the homemade stuff is better. so I’m assuming that, you know, for this is that, you know, this isn’t if you, if all your processes are broken and everything’s on fire all the time.

This stuff probably isn’t gonna make a super big difference for you, I’m assuming, right? You’re already good at what you do, you’re delivering great results, but who doesn’t like things to be just a little bit better? So, so these are some strategies that, you know, can show appreciation to people that shows that, hey, you give a crap.

In fact, you know, we can get some, get some help in boosting our 

[00:06:13] responses here. So let’s start with the humble thank you card. IE how I used to spend my Wednesday mornings during my brief six months as a car salesman. So typically, you know, at, in a, in a car, at a car, you know, dealership Wednesday mornings are really slow, right?

Most people are not spending their mornings car shopping. so typically you get in, you, you have, you have some leads from the previous night. If you’re lucky, you have a few follow-up phone calls to make and then. Not a whole lot going on. So my morning routine typically was, yep, do the follow ups. If I had everybody, then I’d go sit at my desk usually for about an hour, and I would send out little handwritten thank you notes to everybody who’d purchased the car from me from the past week.

and. You’d think, oh yeah, that’s probably a pretty normal thing to do. Nobody else did it. A single other person was, was doing it. And they’re like, that’s a waste of time. I even remember the, you know, our receptionist at the front desk was like, I can run them through the mail machine for you and I in, I insisted on putting in on my own little, actual stamps with them because I thought it looked nicer. So lemme kind of show you, I’ll show you what I do now. So this is when I talked to a new prospect, you know, we had a good conversation and we’re gonna follow up with some information. But ultimately, you know, the, those, those calls, right? Third Diamond doesn’t.

So how do you stand out? How do you make sure that your presentation is the one that gets remembered? And obviously, right, you gotta have a good offer. You’ve gotta do a good, a good job with all of the fundamentals. But this is the thing that’s kind of that little cherry on top that kind of helps. So here’s what I do.

and I’ll see if I got, so I send out nice, just nice little thank you card. Doesn’t have to be super, super fancy though. I like the ones that are maybe a little bit embossed. And you can kind of feel them, and they’re kind of shiny. I, just think it gives for a good presentation, you know, and I’ll put in my own, I get the little like, you know, stamps, the commemorative stamps.

So, got some buzz light years here today. Here’s some waterfalls. ones that, again, they just look a little bit, little bit different. get those in the mail and send them out as, kind of a follow up. So Right. Still doing all the normal things you would do to follow up with a prospect. Still sending them, you know, a thank you.

Thanks for the meeting email, if we said you know, they wanted a proposal we’re getting that scheduled for proposal review, getting, you know, flow charts and just other materials out there in their inbox or sending via LinkedIn, depending on how they want it. But this is kind of that. How do I make sure that I show up again in their inbox.

So, like I said, you send this to people you’ve met with, thanking them for their time. And you know what, yes, I do write everyone by hand. Yes. The whole thing. Even, even the address, I don’t print the address, through the printer. and like I said, using real stamps is, the 

[00:09:12] best. I know that one question that comes up is.

How do, how do you get their address, Gary? Start with Google Maps. right. A lot of times I talk to lots of business owners, good chance that they have, Google Maps, especially if they’ve, you know, got a few employees, they’ve got an office, or maybe they’re in a, you know, co-working space and they have a suite, pretty common now, but for the ones that work at home, you know what, the White pages still exists.

You can get a subscription to that if you’d like. and then most of the time it, it’s there because. Your, your address is in most cases public record, unless you’ve been on one of those, like you, those website that kind of clears the website of, of all your personal information. and you, you know, you see those people once in a while, and in those cases, typically it ends up at their business address.

And that’s my, like I said, I’m not trying to stalk anybody and send it to their home address unless I can’t find a business address. So that’s, that’s generally where I start. So depending on who you work with. Google Maps great place to start, to, to find, to find the mailing address there. what are the benefits Is that they remember you.

That’s the big one, right? People are busy. They’re, they have busy lives. There’s a lot going on. There’s probably many times, I mean, how many times have you gotten off a meeting with somebody? and Your day got so busy. You forgot they existed. They followed up. You, may have seen it, you didn’t respond. because again, you, had a lot going on.

So would anything have changed, had something actually popped up in the mailbox thanking you for your time? Probably. Right. It’s not a hundred, it’s not like a hundred percent hack to, get new clients, but it does, it does help. because now, now they remembered you. And you took the time to thank them for theirs, so they feel like they were appreciated.

So they’re gonna be more responsive to your followups. That’s been kinda the biggest thing I’ve noticed is as if I’m sending these out, they’re more responsive than they otherwise would be. They could be equally interested. People are right in, in the offer that we have, right? That’s, that’s the goal. But how do we actually get them across the finish line?

And I’ll tell you since, since nobody else does this. This is kind of what this is. This whole session is probably old school techniques to, to a lot of people here, right? Fundamentals you would’ve used in the 1980s. thing is they’re, they’re probably even more relevant today in this world of, of AI automation and your spam folder being over.

Still over full of, of just constant message after message after message. I’ve counted mine now. It’s 30, 30 cold emails that are usually personalized custom outreach, right? Not, not the scans, not the, you know, broadcast stuff. Like the people who are individually going through messaging means over 30 a day because that’s like almost close, almost.

I don’t get as many on the weekends. So it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 750 a month. How many do I reply to? Not maybe one or two. So your, your odds are continually going down in my inbox. whereas my mailbox still empty. There’s almost nothing in it. I think today the one thing I got was, was the thank you gifts I send out to podcast guests.

I got that envelope today. That was the only thing in my mailbox. Here’s the thing, and like I said, since nobody else is doing this, basically that space is yours. You get to own it. And these, it will help convert them into new clients. so strategy number one, definitely recommend it for, it is probably the best five minutes you can find to, take the time to send, to write a handwritten thank you note.

It will boost, it’ll probably be the biggest boost you’ll see for, that, time investment. 

[00:12:57] Well, let’s say, you know, I wanna go a little bigger. I want to be a little bit more interesting. One of the things I started doing, trying to think about how do we make the onboarding experience when we get a new client a little bit more fun and a little bit more unique.

Right? That’s one of the big things we continue to try to do is be more human, be more fun, and just be more, try and figure out how do we stand out so we can try to do that. For our clients, when we’re working with them, we try to do it with our clients to do the same thing for them. So what do I send?

I send these, here is these little boxes of chocolates. Now there’s a, I have a few places I like to go, so it doesn’t have to be a specific brand or anything like that. I just happen to really like these and they’re local, so. I think that’s always, it’s a, it’s a nice touch, I think, to send something, you know, kinda local to your, from your local market or a place you really like.

I think that that helps. But again, not, a strict requirement, to doing that. The fact that you took the time to, to think and, do something for them is, gonna make a difference. So I like to send out a little box of chocolates, same type of idea. I have just a nice little gift box that I do and I kind of wrap it in tissue paper.

the thank you card again. Shows up again, just thanking them for, working with us. And, you know, we look forward to working together. It’s probably a little cliche, but again, it’s yeah it’s a little handwritten note to them, you know, and, and people really like it. it’s, it’s the, every, time I send them out, pretty much without fail, within a day or two, it’s, you know, I, love them.

They’re gone. What are you doing to me, my waistline? You know, or my wife loved them. It’s, you get, you get lots and lots of feedback on it. It makes them smile. It just kind of, it kind of puts them a little bit more at ease, right? They’re, investing in you, things are getting started. There might be a lot going on to get everything going up and running.

Just kind of one of those nice little touches you can put, on it. So this case, finding the address is super easy since you probably captured that piece of information when they paid their invoice. so, I like, I like this one a lot. Do you guys, do you guys do any, have any like that you’d like this?

Or if somebody sent you chocolates, would you, would you like it? Is there something else you’d prefer? Just kind of curious to get your, your thoughts, your thoughts on it. big benefit here is it’s, a retention booster. we find that by doing this right, again, fundamentals, are we delivering, you know, delivering results.

Is the service good? You know, all the, all those things you would normally do for a client? You still gotta do all those. but We find that they do stick around longer when they, when they get the, chocolates. and I don’t, I don’t have any split test, you know, analytic data to share with you to saying that this is 100% true.

But I can tell you anecdotally when we started doing this and kind of making, you know, we, we noticed that people stuck around longer. And I can tell you that when it’s dropped off and forgotten, because I’m not perfect either. Right? You just like anybody else, I get busy. and we’ve had times where not everybody got sent out their, their chocolates in a timely manner.

and we’ve noticed that, Hmm. Is it, is, is the drop off in retention there because we’re not doing as good of a job or just because we didn’t get the, the little, the little thank you gestures sent out to them. So, Again, I would say I, I, I would feel confident saying that helps us boost the retention a little bit.

And again, it kind of makes, it makes your conversations just easier to have with people. because they, they feel like they’re being appreciated and noticed. Right. Even though you’re super responsive to all their messages and emails they send. Anyway, this is that little, little cherry on 

[00:16:49] top. So last one I got for you here is, I’ll move my view here since it seems like I’ve, Gotten my, my face in the way of this slide is Christmas gifts. What do you send it to? Correct clients, obviously. So now mine, I typically time mine to arrive just after Christmas, probably more because that’s what my schedule allows. But I do kind of find that it, it, it, it allows the craziness of, you know, the holidays to subside just a little bit.

typically they’ve had the. They’ve had their biggest, you know, holiday celebrations. So if it arrives kind of between Christmas and New Year’s, they have a chance to look at it. And, and again, it’s probably one of the few that they receive from, from a vendor. So what do you send? And the thing is, you can send whatever you would like.

I know my wife, my wife works at a law firm, so she, they typically do gift baskets, which is your typical cheeses, you know, your charcuterie types of stuff, fun things like that. received one, one piece of direct mail. I, I have, I think I showed this one last month, but. Get, I get such few, so few things in the mail, I have to recycle them.

Is that, this one was, holiday jams or were gifted jams, something like that. So it can be whatever you’d like, something you like to tell a story with. For me or mine. I like to send out bourbon. Because I enjoy it, so I like to kind of find ones. I thought, oh, this was a, this was a good one this year.

This was a new discovery. And kind of share that with people. Do they all drink? Not necessarily if I know that though ahead of time, I don’t send, obviously I don’t send them the bourbon. and sometimes somebody will say, Hey, appreciate it, you know, gave it to, you know, my husband or gave it to, you know, to a friend or something.

And they, they really enjoyed it. So you make that little note down, it says send them something else next year, and let them know. so if, if you are one of my clients, as long as I can find this particular one, this is what will be. Be sending out this year. though this one is a little bit tricky to find, it was something we found, on a trip in Virginia and they had won, you know, on a Bourbon of the Year award with that style.

So I thought, ah, this’ll be a cool one. Kind of a cool little discovery, cool story to tell. So kind of just tying, tying it all together and, and letting people know, Hey, you know, we’re, we’re thinking of you and you know, you matter. and it’s not just, you know, another, another, you know. Kind of pointless, you know, gift to, to send.

So, like I said, that’s what I like to send. and like I said, even if people don’t, you know, don’t necessarily drink bourbon themselves, they usually will, will, you know, appreciate it though. I do get many, though for the most part I’m trying to send it to people who I know would appreciate it. And you’d be amazed after you’ve had a few, you know.

You know, monthly review meetings or kind of progress updates with a client, how you configure that kind of stuff out without ever needing to ask it. because you make a little bit of small talk for a minute or two, you have an idea of, you know, what you should send to who. but that’s, that’s kind of the, the things that I’m finding, you know, work, work well for us.

And here’s the big thing about right, is there, there is certainly a, a benefit to doing this and that’s. They, they stick around longer just like by doing these other things. With, with the smaller ones, with chocolates and stuff, they’re, they’re gonna stick around longer. And the big one I see is that these are the most likely people to actually send in a referral.

right. You, you, if you’re doing a good job, right? You think that that’s enough to get a good referral. And sometimes it is, but this is kind of one of those things, helps you stand out. You might prob in a lot of cases you’re probably the only person who, who took the time to send them anything. you know, around any vendor for the, you know, around the holidays, got multiple vendors.

We spend tens of thousands of dollars with them every year. But do I get from them? Nothing. Their, their service is good and, you know, their product’s good enough that, but they’re not doing anything extra to keep me, keep me around. I’ll finish with one more story here, but if you have any stories you’d like to share or if you have questions kind of about how this works, how you, you know, how you would do it or how it fit for kind of your process, I’ll open it up to questions there, but I’m kind of like to get your take or questions on 

[00:21:25] it. But I’ll tell you kind of last one here. We’ll go back to, you know, my corporate days when, you know, I was working for a, a big, car dealership group, and this was in Wisconsin. right. a lot of, a lot of, you know, some vendors really do have it figured out. I tell you, a lot of them don’t. But the TV stations have this figured out because what they’ll do is if you’re doing, you know, spending enough money with them every year, you get a vacation, and this isn’t some, oh, you know, here’s, you know, a couple plane tickets or, you know, you know, go, go somewhere.

It’s, it’s a very curated experience. So what happens is he is, oh, they’ll have a destination they’re going to for that year, and you can take, it’s you and a guest typically for, you know, that particular company. so one year I, you know, my boss couldn’t go and then, you know, the president of the company’s like, well, I can’t go.

so it, it fell down to me. I was a little lower on the totem pole, but nobody else was, was available. So, ended up going to Monaco, you know, that nice little place near, between France and Italy. Never been. you know, probably you’re, if you’re, if you’ve heard of it, it might be because of the mining Carlo Casino thing.

but all expense paid trip, right? They covered airfare, transportation, hotels. We had a great hotel on the Mediterranean, you know, sea. Really cool, really cool experience and I’m still talking about it now, 10 years later. Because, but, but why? Because why, why would they spend, why would a company spend probably three to $5,000 to do a trip like that?

Because they know that it gets people to, to stick around it. It helps them feel like there’s more value. to, to the service they’re offering. If you have more experiences with them like that, and right, they do, they’ll do like dinners with, you know, the, the general managers of, of a TV station. So you kind of meet some of the other people that work there very, very well thought out, you know, very, very nice experience types of things.

So, And, and here’s the thing, very, very common to do if you’re spending enough money advertising on tv. that’s, that’s the trick there. but would love to kind of get your take on it. Like I said, those are kind of the three that, that I’ve, I’ve used in the past is just sending thank you cards after, after meetings, probably if there’s only one you wanna take away right now.

Just start making that a habit and just send those out. Take five minutes after a meeting, right? You’re gonna follow up with messaging Anyway, take a couple extra minutes to write the, thank you card, and pop it in the mail. it’s gonna help 

[00:24:06] you. So, any other questions or anything like that? I know, like I said, wanted to keep today’s, session a little bit shorter than normal, because I know Thanksgiving come up, people are busy and I do appreciate, those of you who took the time to, to hop on today.

So. I will, I’ll stick around here for a few more seconds, see if any questions come in. Otherwise, hope you have a great Thanksgiving. I don’t know if we’re gonna do a live stream in December, so if that is the case, I hope everybody’s merry Christmas and happy New Year. happy holidays in general, and like I said, if this is the last, last session of the year, we’ll see you again in January.

We’ll, we’ll pick these back up. Probably be talking about. Ways to fill your sales pipeline, in 2026. So, I got some guests that, we’re starting to get lined up. I think it’s gonna be a good, good year for some sessions. So, looking forward to those with everybody in the new year. So don’t see any questions.

I’m gonna let y’all go. Happy Thanksgiving and we’ll see you, for sure in 2026, maybe in December. Stay tuned.