Why Thank Your Clients?

Behavior That Is Rewarded Is Repeated

Say “thank you” to your clients on a regular basis. “Thank you for your business,” “thank you for confidence in me,” “thank you for calling/emailing/texting/Zooming.”  You have a lot of reasons to say thank you, but do you take the opportunity to say it? People like hearing it because it’s a reward. It’s a small reward, but it is a reward.

You learned this in Psychology 101 but may have forgotten it because it seems too simple. But it works. I have a colleague who spent several years as a sales manager for a trust and investment management group. He had nine salespeople, and he got those same people to increase their sales by 50% in year one and another 50% in year two.

How did he do it? He said, “I remembered from Psych 101 the phrase that ‘behavior which is rewarded is repeated.’ Since the salespeople were on a fixed commission schedule, I couldn’t give them more money, so, every time one of them opened an account, I wrote them a card and thanked them.” If one of them was on a streak and opened four accounts in a week, they received four cards.

His salespeople worked out of five different offices, and he visited every office at least once a week. After a few months in his position, he noticed his salespeople had started to stack the “thank you” cards on their desks. No one else in the offices received “thank you” cards while salespeople received dozens.

“I just thanked them all the time.” He also made a point of always thanking them in front of higher-ranking executives. “Susan does a great job for the bank and is one of our top salespeople.” All of us like to be thanked by our manager in front of one of the bosses. It doesn’t take anything away from you. Instead, you come across to the senior executive as a good manager of people.

Make a conscious effort to thank your clients, associates, or direct reports every time they do something significant. Thank the people who answer the phone. It costs you nothing and gains you a lot.

I have done this throughout my career, and it significantly helped me establish a client base and grow my practice. When I went on to other positions and other responsibilities, I did the same thing. Do people feel appreciated when they hear those two words? Yes!

We live in a society where the ratio of criticism to praise is about 500 to 1. From observation or the media, we know more people than before are being rude to “front line” workers for seemingly no reason. While they might be friendly people most of the time, they don’t realize how unsympathetic and rude they seem.

I travel a lot but often go to a neighborhood coffee house to work for a few hours when I’m home. It surprises me how many customers are abrupt or rude and don’t say “thank you” to the baristas. As you might imagine, I say it all the time. While I don’t do it for this reason, occasionally I don’t have to pay for my coffee. The baristas say, “on the house.”

Saying “thank you” costs you nothing, but it makes the other person feel just a bit better.

Contributing Writer: Subject Matter Expert Charles McCain

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