One of my corporate clients is a local mortgage company. Each month, they send me a list of all their clients who have closed on loans in the previous month along with a thank you card for each. The shortbread elves at Vermont Shortbread Company then deliver a raspberry jam-filled closing gift of shortbread along with the card and a festive helium-filled balloon to each person's place of employment. This is:
- Good for Vermont Shortbread Company: everyone loves free food in the middle of the workday and usually people are hooked after one shortbread bite.
- Good for my client: great, inexpensive marketing strategy and a way to stay in clients' (and potential clients') memories.
So recently, I delivered a shortbread thank-you for this client to a Burlington business. As I handed the shortbread and balloon to the lucky recipient, I heard someone in a nearby cubicle say, "Hey, I just closed on a mortgage and I didn't get shortbread!"
Hmmmm...did YOU get shortbread when you closed on your most recent mortgage? Do you remember the name of the person who serviced you? Do you remember the name of the last real estate broker who helped you buy a house? If you answered "NO" to any of these questions, think again about the professionals you're dealing with on what is perhaps the biggest purchase of your life.
Wouldn't a thank-you-for-your-business-we-appreciate-you be great?
In the high tech world of big box stores, big box mortgage companies, and increasing anti-personal service, isn't it nice to receive a freshly baked closing gift from a real estate or mortgage professional who values you and would like you to remember them next time you make a purchase?
As the competition gets tougher and the noise for our consumer attention gets louder and louder, the service providers who regularly show their humanity and gratitude by saying thanks will be the professionals we remember in the long term.
Vermont Shortbread Company is not only in the food biz. We're in the gratitude biz. And that makes this shortbread chick feel good.
