“The Thank You Economy”(by Gary Vaynerchuk) book summary

If you’re someone whose work involves engaging with leads or customers, or you feel like you don’t have enough customers or repeat business, or you have a problem around getting people to talk about your business in a positive way, then “The Thank You Economy” is for you.

Impressions/personal thoughts

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

How the book changed me or made me better at selling

I work a sales job where every day I’m assigned leads, and my performance is almost solely based on my monthly conversion percentage(how well I can help convert our leads into customers). I definitely think it’s easy at times to forget about genuinely helping the people I talk to because I know that I have to set a certain number of appointments to keep my job and perform well.

But since I read this book, I feel like I’ve gotten a new life when it comes to engaging with our leads because I see it as marketing now(which just sounds cooler). Also, I see

• making sure I always do the basics like responding quickly and always keeping my word, and
• going above and beyond for my leads when I could’ve just not

as marketing because it builds trust and most people forget to do those things. Looking at things this way just made me a lot more enthusiastic about talking to the people.

The part of the book I’ve been most excited about applying to my job has been the idea of giving gifts to customers. The idea is that when I engage with customers, I should always be looking for opportunities to give a gift.

A gift doesn’t have to be something that costs money. At my job we're able to lookup unlimited Carfax reports for free. So now, I almost always send my leads a copy of the Carfax report for their vehicle. That’s a free gift

My new practice of scheming up ideas for things that I can consider a gift, then testing them out by giving them to our leads and seeing their reactions has been fun and it’s made my job a lot more interesting. I feel like I’m helping the people I talk to a lot more.

My top lessons learned from the book

Lesson 1 - If I were to start a business, I’d focus 80%(or just the majority) of my time and money on making the product and my engagement with the customers better.

I feel that if I make my product so good the customers tell other people about it, they’ll bring me all the new customers and repeat business I need

Lesson 2 - Don’t forget to do the basics.

I came up with these questions based on what Gary Vee said in the book to judge myself on if I’m doing the basics at work. I realize that doing this consistently is harder than it sounds sometimes, so having these questions as a reminder has helped me keep some sort of a personal standard(especially the first 2). In terms of leads and customers….

• when they call or try to get in contact with me, do they get a response quickly and get the greatest help/customer service opposed to no response & bad service?
• when I say I’ll do something do I do it?
• did they get the product or service in the time that I promised?
• do the customers feel that the product or service delivers or over delivers on the results I promised them?

If I can answer “yes” to all of those questions, I can feel good that I’m being someone my customers can trust and I'm at least doing the basics

Lesson 3 - You make the engagement with your leads and customers better by giving more gifts and solving their problems.

I wrote more on this under the “how the book changed me or made me better at selling” section

Lesson 4 - You make your product or service easier to share by taking away obstacles to sharing

Anything that makes it harder for someone to share you with other people or adds a bunch of required steps to sharing is an obstacle. Examples of obstacles are

• if it’s hard to find your number or get in contact with you
• if it’s hard to search you on google or social media
• if it’s hard to find out more information about you and how your product or service works
• if it’s hard to find where to purchase from you