Legal Marketing & PR

Be Especially Thankful to Those Who Help Your Business

By Tom Kane

Since this is officially 'Thankful' week in the United States, let's not forget all those great clients and contacts who help sustain our law firms and businesses.

I got to thinking about how people forget to thank others based on a personal experience last week. It happened early one day when I was contacted by a freelance writer for a big city daily who wanted permission to use some of my stuff for a story, and apparently was on a tight deadline. I responded by email within ten minutes. Then, silence.

At the end of the day, I got to thinking – having had occasional email problems myself – maybe she didn't get my email. So, I asked. Her response:

'Yes -- thank you for the info! I will include it. Thanks for letting me use the quote -- I think the article turned out great.'

I then asked for a copy of the article, and received a link to it the next day.

My point, obviously, is that I shouldn't have had to ask for a thank you or the article. Thanking people for what they do for you needs to be automatic and immediate, whenever possible ( unless of course you're on deadline). Then again, it only takes slightly more than a nanosecond to reply to an email with 'Thanks.'

Have I ever forgotten to thank someone? Nah, you know better than ask such a silly question.

Of course, we all have. However, I do try to instinctively thank anyone who has been helpful to me ASAP. You should too. Otherwise, people might just stop being helpful in the future.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

P.S. If interested in a couple of other posts about thanking referral sources and developing a 'Thank You' system…

Have You Thanked Your Referral Sources Enough ... or Ever?

Develop a Referral "Thank You" System (2005 post)

Implement a Referral Thank You System (2009 post)
 

Full post as published by Legal Marketing Blog on November 24, 2009 (boomark / email).