Thanking to Grow: Turn November Gratitude into a Year-Round Referral Machine | Ep 161

And if you flip the word around from Thanksgiving to giving thanks, this is the perfect month to reach out to all of your stakeholders in your business to express appreciation and gratitude.

So, for example, businesses thrived because of your customers and they're super fans of you because you've taken care of them and everything else and they've helped propel the growth of your business.

So it's a perfect time to reach out and either send a newsletter, a greeting card to them and basically say, hey, I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate you for being our customer.

And more importantly, because of you, our business has grown and we've added several people to the organization and they're going to be excited about the fact that you're growing because they partnered up with somebody that they wanted to see grow and flourish. So you need to give back some of that energy back to them by expressing gratitude. It's the same thing with your employees.

If you have them, is it the perfect time to reach out and say, hey, thank you, John, Mary, Miguel, Susie, etc. I appreciate the efforts you put in to help grow our company and always going above and beyond and everything else.

Because one of the quotes in my book Creating Business super Fans is people will crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition by taking the time to stop and say thank you. Especially in November, the month of Thanksgiving is an ideal time to differentiate yourself.

And so, for example, if you're in a service based business, and just for example, let's just say you're a kitchen remodeler, okay, here's a way they can leverage thank yous to really blow up your business and change the equation in your favor compared to your competitors. For example, when you go out and bid on a project, you're going to go and visit them and going to say, look, we want to redo this kitchen.

More importantly, when you're done, you want to send a thank you for the opportunity to look and bid on this particular project. That's the first step.

The second step is once you actually submit the bid, you want to incorporate what their expectations are going to be over the period of the project.

So now you're setting proper expectations, but at the same time you're thanking them for the opportunity to submit a bid that's going to differentiate you from the other guys. Because now you're showing that you are very interested in working on that project to beautify their kitchen or their bathroom.

Most people don't send a thank you for the opportunity to submit a bid.

Let's say you win because of the simple fact that let's say there's three bids and you're the only one that submitted a thank you for the opportunity to bid. You've completely differentiated yourself from the other two competitors.

Now, once you get selected, the other thing that I've coached people on is you want to submit a thank you for selecting us. And we're excited to work on a project, and here's how we're going to move forward with the particular project.

And so that's how you start differentiating yourself, just using the word thank you.

And what you want to do is take photographs of the whole project from the beginning, during and after, because it's creating a story of that particular project you're working on. And now when you're done with the project, you again send another thank you for allowing us to work on your home.

And we're grateful to have had the opportunity. And by the way, here's all the photographs for you, because they probably didn't take those pictures of the before, during and after.

And so now you're providing them with that information. And now it's created a story because they can look and say, wow, that's our old kitchen. There's a process.

And look at how beautiful our kitchen or bathroom has become. More importantly, what you've just done is you've also given them a marketing tool. Because let's say it's Kylie's house.

And her friend Patty comes over and goes, man, look at how beautiful this kitchen is. And Kylie's going to turn around and says, yeah, remember what it looked like? And Patty's going to go, no, I don't remember.

Let me show you the pictures of before.

And what's happened is now Kylie is actually selling on your behalf without selling, but positioning you as an organization that's really got its act together. You've provided them a story, and that's how you start creating super fans of your customers.

And now they're naturally helping promote your business so that when Patty down the road says, you know what?

We've been thinking about getting our bathroom remodeled, our closet updated, and in our bedroom, she's going to know to call your business because of what Kylie had said. So those are different ways of differentiating yourself. And I'm leveraging this in a month of Thanksgiving.

Here's another way to dominate your market. Most trade businesses have the one and done mindset, you've done a great job, customer's happy and poof, you're off chasing another opportunity.

But here's how you can really dominate your market and blow away your competition. So you've done the project.

You can use automation tools, for example, to send out automatically a postcard, a card, email, multitude of different things. Hey, it's been about a month.

Just a reminder to make sure that if there's any new appliances or any new electronics, submit your warranty papers and everything else, it shows you care. And more importantly, it's another way to stay in front of that existing customer. Again, using automation tools.

Six months later, you can reach out to Kylie and say, hey, Kylie, it's been six months, how's the kitchen, how's the bathroom going? Or whatever it is that you did.

But you're staying in contact and just reminding them that you're still there and you're available if they need anything. Without selling. You don't need to sell, all you need to do is stay in content. Same thing. Twelve months later, it's a happy anniversary.

Can't believe a year screamed by. Hope you've made some great memories in the new kitchen or whatever.

And again, you can put all this up on automation to stay in contact very subtly but very proficiently in front of your existing customer. And that's how you create super fans from them. Actually, another really clever approach is send them a birthday card as well as a show of gratitude.

One, you're recognizing them and second of all, they're going to go, wow, I got a birthday card from my contractor. How cool is that? And they're going to tell everybody and that's going to be sitting in their kitchen.

And if they got friends coming over, who sent you the birthday card? Oh, yeah, it's my remodeling company. Talk about a game changer.

These are some ideas, especially in a month of Thanksgiving, which is a time to express appreciation and gratitude, how to dominate your market. And eventually over time they're going to reciprocate and basically you're going to get a.

Not really a referral, you're probably going to get a warm introduction, which is much better than a referral because a referral is a name and a number. The difference is an introduction.

You're getting introduced by somebody in common and that's the game changer because now that person is going to come directly to you. So the sales cycle is significantly collapsed. That's all.

I wanted to chat real quickly on this episode of Freddie D's Take Remember, Thanksgiving month is a time to give thanks.

So reach out to your employees, reach out to your contractors, reach out to your suppliers, your distributors, your complimentary business partners, and nobody ever thinks about your ancillary business. Take a moment to thank them as well and watch the magic happen.

You can get the book right now@businesssuperfans.com and it'll be a pop up window that pops up and you can put in your name and email address and I'll send that to you automatically via email. I'm in the process of building a landing page for it, but I wanted to share with you now if you want to get it right away.

Again, it's businesssuperfans.com and the pop up put in your name and email address and it'll automatically send you my new Service Providers Prosperity Playbook. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you on the next Freddy D's take. Remember, one action, one stakeholder, one superfan closer.