Would you choose an Attorney for their RECIPES?

A while back I had a very rude and rewarding experience talking with one of my clients. For the sake of confidentiality, I will call her Sally. One day I was in a meeting with Sally and we were going over her estate planning information and I was helping her with some issues relating to her children and her estate – getting the living trust and other things in order.

But as we finished up the meeting, she said something that put me back on my heels. She asked me I could give her another copy of the wonderful recipe we sent out on how to fix a particular salmon dish. I said, “What are you talking about, I think you have me confused with someone else on this?” After all, Sally was 80 years old and it was not uncommon for her to confuse a few things in our meetings.

She came back and said, “No, Dennis, two months ago you sent out a recipe in your newsletter that was just fabulous on how to fix salmon and I misplaced the newsletter before I could write it down. Can you give me another copy?” Now I knew what she was talking about and was shocked that this is what she remembered from our newsletter. Mind you, putting together a newsletter is no inexpensive task – both from the time it takes to create the content as well as the hard costs to have it produced, published, and mailed.

So I asked her a very revealing question, “Sally, do you read any of the legal articles we put in the newsletter?” Of course you probably already know her answer, “Oh, Dennis, I’m afraid not, I really only read your recipes every month.” OUCH! That is the most expensive recipes she will ever get. The moral of the story: Shoving more information at your clients that they don’t need doesn’t do anything but drain your pocket book and doesn’t do anything for the relationship. Just send them the Recipes, or the crossword puzzles – much easier and much less expensive.