Your practice: Unique Yuletide

(December 2006) While client appreciation gestures can be made throughout the year, December is ripe with opportunities for advisor giving and there are many different variations on the client appreciation theme that can be used this holiday season.

In past years, Kitchener, Ont.-based advisor Gary H. Attack has sent poinsettias, coffee table books and name-engraved pens to clients. This year though he’s fine-tuning his approach and sending his top 120 clients to an exclusive production of “Lend Me a Tenor,” held at the historic St. Jacob’s Schoolhouse Theatre. “Clients appreciate it at this festive time and you naturally want to do something special,” says Attack.

Brian McMillan, an advisor in Collingwood, Ont., is embracing his artist within. In 2001, he rediscovered his way with watercolours and will be sending clients limited edition, hand signed, 5×7 greeting cards featuring local scenes. “There has been a growing appreciation for my watercolour paintings and my prints,” notes McMillan, who currently sells some of his cards to raise money for mission work, outreach and “to help others appreciate life.”

And for those clients that have referred two or more clients to him, McMillan says he will be sending them larger prints of his work. “There are those who continue to champion for my success—advocates of what we [as advisors] do to help others—and I will have some prints matted and framed for those people.”

Vancouver CFP Vera Vlaovich is also in a musical mood this season. She’s sent invites to 10 of her top clients for brunch and a performance by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum Theatre, celebrating Mozart. She also plans on buying books for clients’ children with a non-denominational but spiritual element. “Some of my clients are Jewish, so of course, the gifts won’t be Christmas gifts, but you want to be respectful and mark their own celebrations for them,” she explains. “They’re world stories with messages of abundance and thanks for the things that we have.”

She’ll also be pampering 15 top female clients with spa gift certificates. Brenda Liski’s gardening clients can’t wait to get their hands dirty again. But before that happens, the Regina advisor will be hosting a winter solstice party for 30 to 50 of her A-list clients, marking the shortest day of the year. “It will be on Dec. 21 and it starts at sundown. We’re celebrating the return of the sun. It’s different and fun,” says Liski, adding she’ll be serving up pâté and a gravlax (traditional Swedish and Finnish salt-cured raw salmon),while guests will make merry with Christmas carols, red and white wine, and eggnog.

And in lieu of the $500 his firm usually spends on Christmas cards, Kevin Cork of Calgary will continue in his company’s sponsorship of nine-year-old Nikansu Sithole of Nigeria, through World Vision Canada. Says Cork: “He’s 10 days younger than my own son. His mother has died from AIDS, and he’s living with his aunt. He hasn’t seen his father in a long time—he lives in a far-off town—and because of the sponsorship he now gets the chance to go to school.”

This article first appeared in the December 2005 edition of Advisor’s Edge.

(12/05/06)