Business Correspondence, Anonymous [classic reads .txt] 📗

It will soothe ruffled feelings, wipe out imagined grievances and even lay the basis for firmer relations in the future.

So you may run the gamut of your own business or any other. At every point that marks a transaction between concerns or individuals, you will find some way in which the letter rightly used, can play a profitable part.

There is a romance about the postage stamp as fascinating as any story—not the romance contained in sweet scented notes, but the romance of big things accomplished; organizations developed, businesses built, great commercial houses founded.

In 1902 a couple of men secured the agency for a firm manufacturing extracts and toilet preparations. They organized an agency force through letters and within a year the manufacturers were swamped with business, unable to fill the orders.

Then the men added one or two other lines, still operating from one small office. Soon a storage room was added; then a packing and shipping room was necessary and additional warehouse facilities were needed. Space was rented in the next building; a couple of rooms were secured across the street, and one department was located over the river—wherever rooms could be found.

Next the management decided to issue a regular mailorder catalogue and move to larger quarters where the business could be centered under one roof. A floor in a new building was rented—a whole floor. The employees thought it was extravagance; the managers were dubious, for when the business was gathered in from seven different parts of the city, there was still much vacant floor space.

One year later it was again necessary to rent outside space. The management then decided to erect a permanent home and today the business occupies two large buildings and the firm is known all over the country as one of the big factors of mailorder merchandising.

It has all been done by postage stamps.

When the financial world suddenly tightened up in 1907 a wholesale dry goods house found itself hard pressed for ready money. The credit manager wrote to the customers and begged them to pay up at once. But the retailers were scared and doggedly held onto their cash. Even the merchants who were well rated and whose bills were due, played for time.

The house could not borrow the money it needed and almost in despair the president sat down and wrote a letter to his customers; it was no routine collection letter, but a heart-to-heart talk, telling them that if they did not come to his rescue the business that he had spent thirty years in building would be wiped out and he would be left penniless because he could not collect his money. He had the bookkeepers go through every important account and they found that there was hardly a customer who had not, for one reason or another, at some time asked for an extension of credit. And to each customer the president dictated a personal paragraph, reminding him of the time accommodation had been asked and granted. Then the appeal was made straight from the heart: “Now, when I need help, not merely to tide me over a few weeks but to save me from ruin, will you not strain a point, put forth some special effort to help me out, just as I helped you at such and such a time?”

“If we can collect $20,000,” he had assured his associates, “I know we can borrow $20,000, and that will probably pull us through.”

The third day after his letters went out several checks came in; the fourth day the cashier banked over $22,000; within ten days $68,000 had come in, several merchants paying up accounts that were not yet due; a few even offered to “help out the firm.”

The business was saved—by postage stamps.

Formality to the winds; stereotyped phrases were forgotten; traditional appeals were discarded and a plain talk, man-to-man, just as if the two were closeted together in an office brought hundreds of customers rushing to the assistance of the house with which they had been dealing.

Sixty-eight thousand dollars collected within two weeks when money was almost invisible—and by letter. Truly there is romance in the postage stamp.

Twenty-five years ago a station agent wrote to other agents along the line about a watch that he could sell them at a low price. When an order came in he bought a watch, sent it to the customer and used his profit to buy stamps for more letters. After a while he put in each letter a folder advertising charms, fobs and chains; then rings, cuff buttons and a general line of jewelry was added. It soon became necessary to give up his position on the railroad and devote all his time to the business and one line after another was added to the stock he carried.

Today the house that started in this way has customers in the farthermost parts of civilization; it sells every conceivable product from toothpicks to automobiles and knockdown houses. Two thousand people do nothing but handle mail; over 22,000 orders are received and filled every day; 36,000 men and women are on the payroll.

It has all been done by mail. Postage stamps bring to the house every year business in excess of $65,000,000.

One day the head correspondent in an old established wholesale house in the east had occasion to go through some files of ten and twelve years before. He was at once struck with the number of names with which he was not familiar—former customers who were no longer buying from the house. He put a couple of girls at work making a list of these old customers and checking them up in the mercantile directories to see how many were still in business.

Then he sat down and wrote to them, asking as a personal favor that they write and tell him why they no longer bought of the house; whether its goods or service had not been satisfactory, whether some complaint had not been adjusted. There must be a reason, would they not tell him personally just what it was?

Eighty per cent of the men addressed replied to this personal appeal; many had complaints that were straightened out; others had drifted to other houses for no special reason. The majority were worked back into the “customer” files. Three years later the accounting department checked up the orders received from these re-found customers. The gross was over a million dollars. The business all sprung from one letter.

Yes, there is romance in the postage stamp; there is a latent power in it that few men realize—a power that will remove commercial mountains and erect industrial pyramids.

 

The ADVANTAGES Of Doing Business By Letter

PART I—PREPARING TO WRITE THE LETTER—CHAPTER 2

 

Letters have their limitations and their advantages. The correspondent who is anxious to secure the best results should recognize the inherent weakness of a letter due to its lack of personality in order to reinforce these places. Equally essential is an understanding of the letter’s great NATURAL ADVANTAGES so that the writer can turn them to account—make the most of them. It possesses qualities the personal representative lacks and this chapter tells how to take advantage of them

 

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While it is necessary to know how to write a strong letter, it is likewise essential to understand both the limitations of letters and their advantages. It is necessary, on the one hand, to take into account the handicaps that a letter has in competition with a personal solicitor. Offsetting this are many distinct advantages the letter has over the salesman. To write a really effective letter, a correspondent must thoroughly understand its carrying capacity.

A salesman often wins an audience and secures an order by the force of a dominating personality. The letter can minimize this handicap by an attractive dress and force attention through the impression of quality. The letter lacks the animation of a person but there can be an individuality about its appearance that will assure a respectful hearing for its message.

The personal representative can time his call, knowing that under certain circumstances he may find his man in a favorable frame of mind, or even at the door he may decide it is the part of diplomacy to withdraw and wait a more propitious hour. The letter cannot back out of the prospect’s office; it cannot shape its canvass to meet the needs of the occasion or make capital out of the mood or the comments of the prospect.

The correspondent cannot afford to ignore these handicaps under which his letter enters the prospect’s office. Rather, he should keep these things constantly in mind in order to overcome the obstacles just as far as possible, reinforcing the letter so it will be prepared for any situation it may encounter at its destination. Explanations must be so clear that questions are unnecessary; objections must be anticipated and answered in advance; the fact that the recipient is busy must be taken into account and the message made just as brief as possible; the reader must be treated with respect and diplomatically brought around to see the relationship between his needs and your product.

But while the letter has these disadvantages, it possesses qualities that the salesman lacks. The letter, once it lies open before the man to whom you wish to talk, is your counterpart, speaking in your words just as you would talk to him if you were in his office or in his home. That is, the right letter. It reflects your personality and not that of some third person who may be working for a competitor next year.

The letter, if clearly written, will not misrepresent your proposition; its desire for a commission or for increased sales will not lead it to make exaggerated statements or unauthorized promises. The letter will reach the prospect just as it left your desk, with the same amount of enthusiasm and freshness. It will not be tired and sleepy because it had to catch a midnight train; it will not be out of sorts because of the poor coffee and the cold potatoes served at the Grand hotel for breakfast; it will not be peeved because it lost a big sale across the street; it will not be in a hurry to make the 11:30 local; it will not be discouraged because a competitor is making inroads into the territory.

You have the satisfaction of knowing that the letter is immune from these ills and weaknesses to which flesh is heir and will deliver your message faithfully, promptly, loyally. It will not have to resort to clever devices to get past the glass door, nor will it be told in frigid tones by the guard on watch to call some other day. The courtesy of the mail will take your letter to the proper authority. If it goes out in a dignified dress and presents its proposition concisely it is assured of a considerate hearing.

It will deliver its message just as readily to some Garcia in the mountains of Cuba as to the man in the next block. The salesman who makes a dozen calls a day is doing good work; letters can present your proposition to a hundred thousand prospects on the one forenoon. They can cover the same territory a week later and call again and again just as often as you desire. You cannot time the letter’s call to the hour but you can make sure it reaches the prospect on the day of the week and the time of the month when he is most likely to give it consideration. You know exactly the kind of canvass every letter is making; you know that every call on the list is made.

The salesman must look well to his laurels if he