Distraction-Proof® Advisor Ideas

The end-of-year giving season is fast approaching. Here’s some ideas you might find useful.
…
We’re now in the first week of October, and you are probably receiving offers from card companies offering deals for you to purchase either Thanksgiving-day or Christmas-day cards. That can be a really nice touch for you to provide your best clients, especially— a fun way of letting them see that you are mindful of them. We favored sending out a Thanksgiving-day card and just letting people know what we were most thankful for that year and that we were thankful for the relationship that we shared with them.

One of the things we did one year around Thanksgiving was to go to the local Toys’R’Us store and purchase a whole bunch of toys. We took a photo of it, and sent it to our clients, with a message saying, “In lieu of a Thanksgiving-day and Christmas-day card, we have allocated a certain portion of our revenues to purchase toys for a couple of charities.” We focused on Toys for Tots one year. You could also do it for Boys and Girls Club or even Angel Tree. We were blown away by the response we got from our clients! They said to us, “We don’t need another Christmas card. We’re excited to see that some of what we paid you actually went to help younger underprivileged children in our community.” What was really surprising is the following year, around the same time, we received emails from them asking us who the gift recipients would be this time around. So it really made a positive impression on our clients.

Everyone’s getting Christmas cards from December first onwards. By sending something around Thanksgiving, you can preempt that rush, be seen to rise above the noise, and let people see how you’re approaching this entire holiday season.

So to do this most effectively,

1. Select a charity. It might be Toys for Tots. It might be Angel Tree. Whatever it might be that you decide on, select a charity.


2. Get excited about it.Take a photo of what you’re doing, not to brag about it, but to let your clients know some of what you paid us this year went towards underprivileged children in our community.


3. Make it a process. Do the same thing next year—for a different group—but do the same thing next year, so that come September, you are getting ready for this season and know exactly what it is you want to do, know exactly how it is you want to publicize it to your existing clients, and look forward to impacting someone who’s less privileged than you within your community.

Enjoy the season, and I look forward to bringing you another Distraction-Proof Advisor Idea next week.