Gifting 101 for law firm clients

Speaker A [00:00:13]:

Hello and welcome, listeners, to the wildly successful Law Firm podcast. This is your host, Narmin Gisani, and I am here with the final episode of this season. I will tell you that I had a different final episode recorded, and I decided in my perfectionism, which I own up to, that it wasn't ready yet. And it's not ready because the thing that I'm talking about, the decision making tool, when I first recorded the episode, it was a 20 question PDF of a decision making tree that basically helped you figure out whatever the answer was to something that you were struggling with. And since I've created it, I've let it breathe a little. I do that with a lot of the things that I create. I let them breathe. I take some time away from it and then I come back to it and I ask myself, hey, is this still something that holds true? Well, for this one document, the number of questions felt so overwhelming when I looked at it again a couple of months later.

Speaker A [00:01:26]:

So I'm actually pulling it back. I'm not making it available. I'm going to rework it. And what I realized is that the 20 questions that I had really needs to be five questions. And those five questions are going to be damn good questions. So stay tuned for that because it is going to come soon. So instead of ending this season with a big question around decisions, I decided I was actually going to make it simple. I am going to talk to you today about gifting and using gifting as a strategy to get new clients.

Speaker A [00:02:16]:

Now I will share with you specific examples of what I've used to gift clients, potential clients, past clients. I am all about gifting to people. It's not necessarily my quote unquote love language for those of you who are thinking that. But it is a great strategy that when you do it the right way doesn't feel creepy or needy or desperate or anything like that. Instead, it makes you the winner in your client size. It makes you the person that people want to hire and consistently refer. Now, some of you are probably already doing a pretty good job with getting referrals. Maybe you're at 20% to 30%.

Speaker A [00:03:10]:

But what if we took your referrals from 30% to 40% to like 50 and 60 and it cost you a fraction of what the benefit actually was? So I'm going to give you some numbers. I'm going to make this really tangible and easy for you all to understand. Number one, you should 100% gift something to your clients at least twice a year. Twice a year? What do you mean? I'm not made of money nor mean. I understand that. But twice a year is incredibly important. We know that everyone tries to give gifts around the holidays. Here's why that sucks and here's why you shouldn't do that.

Speaker A [00:04:06]:

Name a gift that a corporate company sent to you that you still remember that you received around the holidays. I'm waiting. What'd you get? Do you remember the company? Do you remember what you got? Probably not. I am not a big fan of holiday gifting. Now, for certain people, I might say if you can get the holiday gift in before all the others, like the first week of November, I think that's cute. I think if you're going to gift a pie around July 4, I think that's cute. But that end of year seasonal gifting, that's horrible. Please don't do it.

Speaker A [00:04:51]:

You are just throwing money away. Everyone else is doing it at that time. And you just seem like a follower. You don't seem like a leader. And if you're listening to this podcast, I know that you are more of a leader than you are a follower. So I want you to keep it simple and I want you to think about your practice area. Think about when it would make sense to gift something to someone. Now, for immigration attorneys, I typically recommend a July 4 gift.

Speaker A [00:05:27]:

Why? Because you're an immigration attorney. They're trying to become us. Citizens or some sort of legal status that they want to gain in the United States. And honoring them around July 4 is really going to help them connect. Now, you guys are going to get into the weeds of it, but does that mean you gift them something every single year? Immigration cases go 510, 15 years sometimes. Like you can't keep affording to send something every single July 4. Yes, I understand. And I think that the first year that you have this new client, you should gift them, let's say the level a gift, whatever that thing is, the mug, the, the knife set, the blanket, whatever you're going to gift them.

Speaker A [00:06:33]:

Right. Give them the full gift that first year. And then the second year, don't just send a card in the mail, but give them something less than. So if the first year gift is $30, the second year gift can be $15, the third year gift can be $5, and so on and so forth. Look, these are just sort of exaggerated numbers. Please don't start commenting saying I can't get anything for $5. I would argue that you still could if you were being creative, but that's not the point here. The point is for you to understand the concept, which is you want to gift people.

Speaker A [00:07:12]:

You want to gift your clients every year because even though they're not actively paying you, year two, year three, you're just waiting for USCIS to get it together and to give you an answer. Well, that person, that client of yours probably knows about 15 other immigrants who probably need an attorney to get some sort of status. So imagine if you keep respecting them and respecting the business that they've brought to you year after year after year on this very special day, July 4. It just makes for easy referral business. Okay? So that is one very specific example. I'm going to give you another example that always works well with clients. People love their birthday. People love when people know when their birthday is.

Speaker A [00:08:12]:

So don't opt for the end of year holiday gift. Give them something on their birthday. Send them something that says, hey, I know it's your birthday, and you might think I'm just a cold hearted lawyer that's sending you $5,000 invoices and timing you for phone calls. That one thing makes a huge difference for 99% of clients. Look, you're still going to have that 1% that are assholes and ungrateful, but that's their problem and not yours. Don't hold that one asshole client against your other, like 70, 80 amazing, great clients that you have. So birthday gifting is a great idea. Another time of year that I think it would be very wonderful if a divorce attorney decided to do this, is to send a gift on Valentine's Day.

Speaker A [00:09:20]:

Why not? They might be going through a divorce, or they might have already been divorced, or maybe they're going through a really nasty child custody situation. And guess what? February 14. No matter how above all of that you are, no matter how into Galentine's Day you are, it still feels shitty for most people because everything around them is a reminder of either that they are single or they are unloved, or that everyone else is happily in love and they're the only ones who are miserable. And imagine if you gave your client something on Valentine's Day, year after year after year, even after they stopped working with you, how wonderful they would feel, how many referrals you would get, the things that people would write about you in Google reviews, I can just see it now. These reviews are just going to be glowing. So for those of you who are thinking that, who are thinking that gifting is just so not the thing, and why would you waste your money and all of that? I really don't want you to see it that way. See it as an investment in marketing. So instead of you spending whatever thousands of dollars you're going to spend on, I don't know, AVO or SEO or Instagram or whatever else you're going to spend your money on, if you actually took part of that budget away and spent it on gifting, it would do so much good for you and your business.

Speaker A [00:11:25]:

So I want you to really start thinking about it. I know now the next thing that you're going to say is, well, that's just going to create so much admin work, and how am I ever going to find someone who can do that again? That's why you automate these things. And that's something I do for my clients. We make sure that gifting is automated. It's easy. It's not something that you're thinking about every single time. It just happens behind the scenes. And it works out phenomenally for them.

Speaker A [00:11:58]:

Okay, I'm going to share with you some of the gifts that I have sent to clients and past clients and in general, just people that I have enjoyed their company and have really wanted to say thank you. So one of my favorite gifts to send to people that is insanely affordable is I will go on Etsy, and I will find really funny, witty stickers. I will throw stickers on searches. Excuse me. I will throw sticker searches into Etsy. For things like RBG, I might do something like witty mom stickers, witty lawyer stickers, all sorts of stickers on Etsy. And they cost $3. I usually buy them in bulk, and I will send out a sticker in a handwritten note, all of it, including postage, plus the envelope, plus the card that it's going in, cost me around, like, 5.30 per person that it goes to.

Speaker A [00:13:19]:

So really about the cup of coffee these days. And I will send that to people that I know, people that I want to keep in touch with. I cannot tell you how many people have responded to stickers that I've gotten and said, oh my God, I died laughing. It's on my computer. I bought a notebook just for this sticker. It's on my blah, blah, blah. I see it every time I blah, blah, blah. Guess what I just bought? I just bought Top of Mind for five dollarsthirty.

Speaker A [00:14:01]:

So for those of you who are thinking, I don't fucking want a sticker, I'm not sending stickers to my clients, think again, darling. Think again, because it cost me way less than some shitty mug that I'm going to send to someone that says wildly successful law firm on it that they're not even going to carry around, and they're probably going to hand away to someone or get rid of. But that sticker, every time they see it, they are thinking of me, and it didn't cost me a whole lot for it. Okay, other gifts that I have given to people, I've sent two people coloring books. And they're not just any kind of coloring books. They are coloring books with curse words in them. If you're on my newsletter, then you know that I love these coloring books. I have so much fun with them.

Speaker A [00:14:55]:

There is so much calm that I get from coloring in the word fuck. One of my favorite ones that I posted on LinkedIn is something like, don't be someone else's asshole, or something like that. It was so funny, and it was just amazing. So I have gifted two people coloring books with coloring pencils and shipped that to them, and I get back photos, photos of these coloring books. And it is the most amazing thing to see people using them. Now, if you have kids who maybe can't read yet, that would be something great that you could do with your kids. So I highly recommend doing things that are outside of the box stickers and coloring books. Most of you are probably like, I can't send that to my client.

Speaker A [00:15:55]:

But hey, if you have a heavy child modification practice, why wouldn't you why wouldn't you send that if you know your clients on a more personal level? Like if you know that your client is obsessed with plants or cats or something like that. I mean, cat lovers will wear anything about cats, whether it's a t shirt, a sticker, whatever it is, they are going to love it and they are going to wear it because they own being cat lovers. So I just want you to think about more than just sending something with your shitty logo on it because no one wants it. I'm sorry. Please don't send me something with your logo. I'm sure it's really cool. I'm sure you paid a lot for it. I'm sure it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, but it doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy.

Speaker A [00:16:47]:

So why am I going to carry something with your company's name on it? I want a gift that is for me. I don't want something that you think I'm going to carry around to promote you and your law firm. That's not going to happen. So gifts cannot be about you. They cannot include your law firm logo. They cannot include anything about you. It needs to be something that makes your client feel better. So I've shared with you a lot about gifting here.

Speaker A [00:17:27]:

I could probably talk for hours more about gifting, when to gift, how to gift, what to gift, what's the dollar amount that should be gifted. How do you know how much to gift to people? I'm going to say this. You should be gifting between one to 3% every single year of whatever your revenue is. So if you make $100,000 1% of that $1,000, that's what you should be gifting every year. That's how much it's going to be. And if you are making more than that, then you should be gifting more. So for those of you who just send out gifts around the holidays, stop be creative and gift at other times. Gift things that are like, oh my God, how did they know I wanted this? If you are in a city that is a very cool city, gift them a little tote bag with the city skyline.

Speaker A [00:18:41]:

Chicago, New York, Dallas, Atlanta, like all of these places you can find on Etsy with really cool gift bags that have or little tote bags that have the city skyline. And they are going to carry that thing around. They're going to put their groceries in it. They're going to put their kids knickknacks in it. They are going to carry that thing forever. And you just spot top of mind without having to spend a whole lot of money. And I'll be honest, some of you have spent 30 $40 on yeti mugs. Don't send another yeti mug.

Speaker A [00:19:21]:

Do not send another yeti mug. And if you're listening to this and you're thinking about doing it, please cancel it. Don't do it. You also typically don't want to gift food because they're going to eat it and forget it. You want to gift something that feels more like an experience, something that feels really personal to the person that you know. Having intake firm is super important in this because you can ask specific questions in my client intake form. I will ask what's your favorite city you've ever traveled to? And then I will gift something around their favorite place that they have traveled to. So it could be a great poster.

Speaker A [00:20:08]:

That's Parisian, if Paris happens to be that person's favorite city. So there's 700 creative ways to think about this, and this is just one short little episode on it. Keep thinking of ideas and I'm 100% sure that you will come up with something. And as a final note on this podcast, I wanted to let you know of some new things that are coming up and some feedback that I would love from you. So, friends, there is going to be one final upcoming season of this podcast. You heard right, a final season. I would love your feedback on what direction this podcast should go in after the final season. The final season is probably going to air sometime in September through November, maybe December, just depending on how many episodes there are, and then 2024.

Speaker A [00:21:13]:

I will likely go off air on this podcast, but I would love to hear from you on should I? Shouldn't I? And if you're curious to know why I'm going off air on this podcast, it's because I am actually going to be starting a new private podcast just for women attorneys. So this podcast is being made available publicly, which means you can go to Apple podcasts. You can search Nurmeen Jasani, you can search Wiley's successful law Firm, you can search Law Firm on Spotify, Apple, the Internet, and you will see this podcast pop up. And what I have realized is that there is a story and a conversation that I want to have with women attorneys who maybe wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable sharing their experience on a public podcast. So it will be made private. I will make sure that only women are listening to it. And if you identify as woman, then obviously this is for you as well. I want to talk about their specific experience with the law, whether it be motherhood or partnership or leaving big law and starting your own firm.

Speaker A [00:22:42]:

Whatever that story is, I want to tell it and I want to hear it, and I want to do it in a place where they feel comfortable. I know many women who have had many experiences that they don't want to share in public forums where, one, their identity isn't protected, and two, where they know that other people could be listening in and that might have some blowback on them. So it's really to protect the listeners. And that podcast is going to be starting in early 2024. And as I think about where my energy is and where my time is and what I want to be doing in 2024, I'm not sure if I will have the bandwidth for two podcasts. However, I do want your feedback. One of the questions in that Google form that you will see, if you just scroll below, you're going to see the link right there to the Google form. And that's the feedback I would love from you.

Speaker A [00:23:45]:

I am considering keeping this as a once a month, twice a month kind of Q and a podcast where if you are a listener, if you have a specific question, you can send that question in and I will go through and respond to your questions. So instead of this being a podcast where I'm coming up with ideas, I'm researching, I'm talking to attorneys, I'm trying to figure out what their experience is, what should I talk about? I'm searching through public forums. What are people saying? Where are law firm owners struggling right now? What do they want to hear? All of those things. So instead of it being that, instead it would be something that is like, hey, I'm a listener and here's a problem I'm having with my law firm. And then I would come and answer that question. There's two versions I'm thinking about doing with that. One is with live coaching. So you being on a call with me live and saying, hey, here's the problem, and me responding back in real time with my answers and my advice and my feedback.

Speaker A [00:25:01]:

The second option is for it to be asynchronous you submit your question and I will respond after the fact and then you can listen to my response on the podcast. So that is something I'm considering. I'm also considering just going off air altogether on this podcast. So please give me your feedback. I would love to hear from you. I know you're thinking, oh, Narmin doesn't care about my opinion. She's never going to read this. No, I read every single email.

Speaker A [00:25:32]:

I read everything that people send to me. I don't have VAS who work for me. I don't have anyone who works for me. I check everything myself. So please take the 30 seconds to complete that form. Scroll down, you will see it. It'll say survey form. Please, please complete it so that we can figure out what the right direction is for this podcast.

Speaker A [00:25:58]:

And that's everything for this season. Thank you so much for listening in. This has actually been a really fun season and I'm starting to feel like I'm getting my podcast legs. Like I can be a little bit more honest, especially about the shitty newsletters that I see and the shitty just things that I see people doing, law firm owners doing. Just trying to find shortcuts so that they don't have to do these things themselves else so it's definitely been a fun season. Thank you for listening in and I hope that you have had a wonderful summer and I will see you in the fall. I will be back here with a new season, but please don't forget to give me your feedback on what should the future of this podcast be. Thanks so much.

Speaker A [00:26:49]:

Bye.