There Never was a Better Day than Thanksgiving to Express Your Gratitude to Your Clients!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year, because giving thanks simply seems to me to be such a sane reason for a holiday, and the ideal opportunity to celebrate something important.  So, to extend that thought, I can assure you firsthand that one of  best business building habits an EMF Business person can utilize, is the Professional Thank You — expressing authentic thanks to your clients.

There are plenty of times we all say thank you obligingly and amiably, like saying thank you to the cashier. My wife is Canadian (one of the politest countries on earth it seems to me) and so in our house we get to celebrate Thanksgiving twice – once in October Canadian style and again in November  American style. But I am not just talking about good manners or double the Turkey Days, I am talking about deeply meaningful gratitude. 

Expressing Thanks Professionally is a Skill that Expands Your Business and Your Career Satisfaction

The sincere kind of thank-you that makes us extend ourselves to the point where we feel a bit vulnerable. Like telling a customer that you have grandkids that you are concerned about growing up in this technology soup, and are really thankful for the opportunity to help her keep her young children safer from EMF exposure and teach EMF protection habits while they are young.

When we give specific examples to our clients of why we appreciate them or what they did that we are grateful for, we can admittedly be self-conscious at first. And yet, the real golden opportunities may lie precisely in those times we find we want to give thanks but hold back. The times we are aware of a little unease most likely means the thank-you will be really meaningful. 

But to achieve this, we must first become aware of our own unease since, human nature being what it is, there are all sorts of conscious and subconscious ways to avoid the discomfort of saying how appreciative we are of our clients.

Here is an example:

You want to send someone a thank you card for being such an appreciated client for some particular reason or other.  But the  you become aware of some thoughts that come up, such as, “Well wait, would a really ‘successful’ person do that — does, let’s say a super famous financial consultant, send cards to say how much they appreciate something?” Probably not. 

Once you recognize those thoughts and emotional doubts, you can get your professionally logical brain on board by realizing, “I know that meaningful thank-yous are valued –they’re rare in today’s professional world and that makes them  stand out from the competition in client’s mind, and furthermore,  precisely because they are rare, they offer more ‘perceived value’ in the marketplace. So,  I am not going to let the insecure parts of my ego hold me back.” You can get past the block and write the note.

With practice and experience you will recognize the endless opportunities in everyday situations for expressing your gratitude in authentic ways.

That is when you will automatically find yourself telling returning clients how grateful you are for their repeat business, pointing out you’re your admiration for their understanding that putting EMF mitigation into practice is not just a onetime endeavor.

Or, as a new client is thanking you while walking you to the door, pausing to show her the stack of thank-you cards from clients that you keep In your briefcase to remind you how important it is to you to be grateful for the opportunity to help others in this life saving line of work.

As time goes on and your  clientele grows, you will become ever more aware of how these acts of gratitude, both given and received, have had big ripple effects in  the success of your EMF business.

Not the least of which is the long history of scientific research showing that job burnout is correlated with not feeling like one’s work has meaningful impact.

More on the topic … here is an article I saved from the New York Times:

The New York Times has this to Say

When Jimmy Fallon sits down to write his weekly thank-you notes on “The Tonight Show,” he is both ribbing and breathing life into a custom many felt was headed the way of the dinosaur. “Thank you, cotton candy,” Mr. Fallon scribbles on a correspondence card, “for making my grandmother’s hair look delicious.” Thank you, “bowling, for giving me an excuse to drink with somebody else’s shoes on.”

Mr. Fallon’s comic routine is a hoot, of course, a joke that points up the truth that the boring stuff your parents made you do never actually goes out of fashion and that also inadvertently supports recent scientific findings linking gratitude to increased optimism, stress reduction and a better night’s sleep.

Few who sit down to write a bread-and-butter note are likely to be aware that by doing so they are not only on trend but also on their way to becoming happier and more sociable people. Apparently, what Emily Post termed good manners (science prefers “gratitude intervention”) has all kinds of unexpected benefits.

“It not only strengthens the bonds between people, in your personal life and in business,” he said of the custom, “it also rings an emotional chord.”

Researchers are finding there is a growing sense that the good manners and thoughtful gesture of the old, reliable handwritten note is making a welcome comeback for rendering thanks for small favors, courtesies, or gifts.

For Martin Nowak, director of Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, thanking is a form of cooperative reciprocity with roots in primate behavior, “Good manners are the basis of civilization.”

A text message just doesn’t cut it for the simple reason that conveying emotion in digital formats is a lost cause. Somehow thickets of exclamation points, ALL CAPS shouts, loaded acronyms and chirpy emoticons cannot approach the freight of feeling that can be conveyed on a scrap of paper with words scratched on it by hand.

“It’s definitely important to show your gratitude, because not everything is going to be given to you,” Brooke Egerton-Warburton, a seventh grader on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, said recently.

 “If you want to stand out, to be more polished, probably the easiest thing you can do is write that thank-you note. Where messages in an inbox look little different from spam, a tidy square in a mailbox crammed with bills and junk mail commands attention. “Like a lot of people who might think, ‘Oh, just send them a text,’  it is nicer in the process of opening a note, feeling the paper, seeing the imperfection of the writing, reading the message in another person’s voice, you actually feel like you have a piece of that person in your hand.”