I was lucky enough to listen to Matt Jones, one of the founders of Four Pillars Gin speak at a conference recently. 

Now it was a virtual conference, but here‘s the thing… in advance, so before the conference session was to take place, they sent out a little sample pack of the Four Pillars Gins.  

So one, the excitement for the session started well before the session was even due to go to air, cause you got this physical delivery of Four Pillars Gin to your door so that’s when the excitement all started.  

They also sent out a ‘what to bring’ on the day of the session and it talked about obviously, bring the Gin, bring your mixer, I think was tonic water, bring a glass of this size, bring ice (which is cool), bring a slither or a wedge of orange, (orange specifically, not lemon) and a couple of other bits and pieces.   

But the beautiful thing was that even though listening to him and his keynote speech was all done virtually, being able to sit there and have a drink while listening to all of the great tales and the stories that Four Pillars Gin have and some beautiful business lessons entwined through a lovely engaging storyline… but you also got to have a sample of this Gin.   

Or even if you didn’t have Gin, I’m sure other people who aren’t Gin drinkers still used it as an excuse to have a drink while they were listening.  

And it’s such a beautiful experience that you can replicate with any of your virtual meetings.  

So I’ve just been surveying some clients for Advisers recently and asking whether they are enjoying the virtual meetings, would they prefer face to face (when you’re allowed to go back to full on face to face).  

And some of the things that they’ve commented on that they miss about meeting their Adviser in the flesh, is they’re missing the chockies or they’re missing the yummy cookies, or they’re missing the beautiful selection of teas that they normally get to choose from when they’re having the meeting.  

But there’s no reason why you can’t send those things to the client before the meeting, get them all excited because they get this physical delivery to their door, but with instructions “don’t eat or drink this until we’re having our meeting and on the day of the meeting boil the kettle in advance to put it into the tea or get the get a lovely plate to put the biscuits on” so that you can kind of replicate some of that face to face experience, even though it’s in a digital meeting.   

So have a think about where you could do some of that to make digital meeting still really engaging, because I think they’re going to play a very very important role in the future in how we deal with our clients.   

Some will go back to face to face but digital will still hold a very very important place in how you communicate with your clients well into the future.  

So why not make it more enjoyable because I certainly loved Matt Jones’s Four Pillars session and have fallen back in love now with Four Pillars Gin,  so a bit of a double whammy for them.   

Anyway, remember You are Valuable!