A great 'keeper' card example is this fine black and white image of Lilly Pond by Chip Forelli:
Or this one of an idyllic fishing scene by Andy Anderson:
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Shelf Life Guaranteed By Business Greeting Card Images
I wish we could legally guarantee shelf life, or refrigerator life, or desk life of these client cards, because that would be the secret to business nirvana for our little company. However, you'll just have to BELIEVE! These images are so beautiful that the recipients, valued clients all, will have a hard time throwing them out.
A great 'keeper' card example is this fine black and white image of Lilly Pond by Chip Forelli:
Or this one of an idyllic fishing scene by Andy Anderson:
A great 'keeper' card example is this fine black and white image of Lilly Pond by Chip Forelli:
Or this one of an idyllic fishing scene by Andy Anderson:
Harry Beckwith on Being Competitive
Trying to understand what motivates people and why they choose one product or service over another seemingly identical one?
This obsesses "Harry Beckwith – best selling author of "What Clients Love."
The following are Harry truisms about the topic of being competitive these days:
• Your biggest competitor is not a competitor; it's your prospect's indifference.
• Your second-biggest competitor is not a competitor; it's your prospect's distrust.
• Prospects decide in the first five seconds.
• Prospects don't try to make the best choice. They try to make the most comfortable choice.
• At heart, every prospect is risk-averse. Risks are always more vivid than rewards.
• Don't create something that everyone likes; create something that many will love.
• Your most valuable salesperson is the person who answers your phones.
• You must improve constantly, because people's expectations rise constantly.
• Whatever you are doing, do it faster. Speed always sells.
• People don't care how good you are. They care how good you can make them.
• The best companies don't make the fewest mistakes; they make the best corrections. • You cannot convince someone you have a superior product at a low price. Make up your mind.
• Despite all the warnings, all people judge books by their covers.
• People hear what they see; you must communicate visually.
• When in doubt -- which is almost always -- people choose what feels familiar.
• If it takes 50 words to make your pitch, I will buy from the person who can do it in 20.
• People don't learn from descriptions. They learn from stories.
This obsesses "Harry Beckwith – best selling author of "What Clients Love."The following are Harry truisms about the topic of being competitive these days:
• Your biggest competitor is not a competitor; it's your prospect's indifference.
• Your second-biggest competitor is not a competitor; it's your prospect's distrust.
• Prospects decide in the first five seconds.
• Prospects don't try to make the best choice. They try to make the most comfortable choice.
• At heart, every prospect is risk-averse. Risks are always more vivid than rewards.
• Don't create something that everyone likes; create something that many will love.
• Your most valuable salesperson is the person who answers your phones.
• You must improve constantly, because people's expectations rise constantly.
• Whatever you are doing, do it faster. Speed always sells.
• People don't care how good you are. They care how good you can make them.
• The best companies don't make the fewest mistakes; they make the best corrections. • You cannot convince someone you have a superior product at a low price. Make up your mind.
• Despite all the warnings, all people judge books by their covers.
• People hear what they see; you must communicate visually.
• When in doubt -- which is almost always -- people choose what feels familiar.
• If it takes 50 words to make your pitch, I will buy from the person who can do it in 20.
• People don't learn from descriptions. They learn from stories.
Business Greeting Card Imagery - Shelf Life Rules
We are pleased to have developed relationships with 30 great photographers from North America, Japan and Europe, who have all graciously agreed to license to us what we consider to be some of their career best work. We are purposefully choosing only those images that are timeless and classic, as opposed to what the competition offers, which is usually silly, forgettable and seasonal.
You will not see the typical ‘stock’ images here. These artists sell signed prints of these images in galleries around the world, and are published in prestigious magazines such as National Geographic. So, we are putting in place an unprecedented collection of fine art photography that will maximize the shelf life of your client cards.
The quality of color produced by our Hewlett Packard Indigo printers is truly amazing, making all of these card images extremely difficult to throw away. Rather the likely reaction by your clients is to keep your cards prominently displayed on the desktop. Don’t be surprised to hear that the card has been framed. It’s happened many times.
This has been a great year for discovering new talent.
Check out our gallery for more of the work of Seattle based photographer Doug Landreth, whose awesome Christmas image is featured on the cover of our new catalog. We have licensed a dozen of his images for you to consider as client cards. Fine art photographers often 'swap images. I had the pleasure of swapping one of my images for one of Doug's flower images. We have it hanging in our kitchen!
You will not see the typical ‘stock’ images here. These artists sell signed prints of these images in galleries around the world, and are published in prestigious magazines such as National Geographic. So, we are putting in place an unprecedented collection of fine art photography that will maximize the shelf life of your client cards.
The quality of color produced by our Hewlett Packard Indigo printers is truly amazing, making all of these card images extremely difficult to throw away. Rather the likely reaction by your clients is to keep your cards prominently displayed on the desktop. Don’t be surprised to hear that the card has been framed. It’s happened many times.
This has been a great year for discovering new talent.
Check out our gallery for more of the work of Seattle based photographer Doug Landreth, whose awesome Christmas image is featured on the cover of our new catalog. We have licensed a dozen of his images for you to consider as client cards. Fine art photographers often 'swap images. I had the pleasure of swapping one of my images for one of Doug's flower images. We have it hanging in our kitchen!
Coaching On The Client Greeting Card
Those of you who have been with us from the beginning have worked primarily with me to compose your notes, get your mailing lists uploaded, and put through your orders. As well, I’ve guided you on how to use the personal note as a relationship building, prospecting and networking tool.
That kind of one-to-one advice and team support is now available through our Personal Note Coaches. We will be introducing you to these talented folk over the next few months, here in the blog, by card, and by phone. They were hired for their great organizational skills, and of course because they write very well.
I will be in the background helping them as they work with you to compose notes that retain your personal voice while being great to read.
Why organizational skills? A great business has processes in place. With your permission, your Note Coaches will take on the responsibility to connect with you and your team consistently, over time, year after year, to help make sure your client greeting card mailings are a reliable, dependable process that will help you build a great client-oriented business.
That kind of one-to-one advice and team support is now available through our Personal Note Coaches. We will be introducing you to these talented folk over the next few months, here in the blog, by card, and by phone. They were hired for their great organizational skills, and of course because they write very well.I will be in the background helping them as they work with you to compose notes that retain your personal voice while being great to read.
Why organizational skills? A great business has processes in place. With your permission, your Note Coaches will take on the responsibility to connect with you and your team consistently, over time, year after year, to help make sure your client greeting card mailings are a reliable, dependable process that will help you build a great client-oriented business.
The Relationship Edge
Jerry Acuff and Wally Wood have published an updated version of their book The Relationship Edge. It's well written and worth reading if you believe that relationships are important to business success. Most people believe that, but few of us learn much about building relationships from our employers. As a result we are left to figure out by ourselves how to build and maintain key relationships.
There are 6 stages of increasingly important relationship 'status':People who don't know me by name
People who know me by name
People who like me
People who are friendly with me
People who respect me *
People who value a relationship with me *
* These last 2 stages are where you want to be with key business contacts.
The book describes how to move up that value ladder. The best way to do so is to start asking questions and listening hard to the answers. There are many questions to ask, but below are some listed by Acuff as particularly important.
Interestingly, we coach our business greeting card customers to 'answer' some of these questions in their seasonal notes, so that the readers, their clients, can get to know the advisor better. The answers to the first set of questions below in particular make for great note reading.
What do you do when you are not working?
What do you enjoy reading when you have spare time
Tell me something about your family.
What sports do you enjoy watching?
What sports, if any, do you enjoy participating in?
Tell me something about yourself that would surprise me.
How did you decide to settle in your area?
Other questions that are important to ask include:
What things do you want to do more of, but don't have time for?
What is the most frustrating thing about being in your business these days?
If all work paid the same, and you could do it again, what would you do?
What challenges or issues in your work might I be able to help you with?
This book is a great starting place if you want to understand the relationship building processes you can follow. You can see more about the Acuff philosophy here: The Relationship Edge
Talk FORM - Family, Occupation, Recreation, Money
Initial conversations with a prospective client can follow a format that reveals the essence of a person quickly. If you trade back and forth during this conversation, and answer the questions as they relate to yourself, after your hear the prospect's answer, you will tighten the relationship bond even further.
There are 4 questions that will open up a conversation easily. FORM is how I used to remember the order of the 4 big questions when I was in the Investment Advisor business. Family - Occupation - Recreation & Money.
F: Ask about their family and then tell them about yours
O: Ask them about their job. Compare notes about how your jobs compare or differ.
R: Ask them what they do outside of work for fun. Sports, hobbies, volunteer work. Talk a bit about what you have in common.
M: For Investment advisors, of course Money is the key topic, but it shouldn't be discussed till you have gotten to know the person, so it comes last. For non-investment advisors, the M can be Motivation, not Money, where the discussion might be about politics, or religion.
You should be able to have a great initial conversation around these 4 questions, and of course, these same questions can be revisited in future meetings to form the basis of the next conversation.
Mitch Anthony, author of StorySelling, has this to say about the above:
There are 4 questions that will open up a conversation easily. FORM is how I used to remember the order of the 4 big questions when I was in the Investment Advisor business. Family - Occupation - Recreation & Money.
F: Ask about their family and then tell them about yours
O: Ask them about their job. Compare notes about how your jobs compare or differ.
R: Ask them what they do outside of work for fun. Sports, hobbies, volunteer work. Talk a bit about what you have in common.
M: For Investment advisors, of course Money is the key topic, but it shouldn't be discussed till you have gotten to know the person, so it comes last. For non-investment advisors, the M can be Motivation, not Money, where the discussion might be about politics, or religion.
You should be able to have a great initial conversation around these 4 questions, and of course, these same questions can be revisited in future meetings to form the basis of the next conversation.
Mitch Anthony, author of StorySelling, has this to say about the above:
Your level of inquiry reveals your level of interest in the client.
If you don’t invest in sufficient discovery, you appear to be more interested in pushing a product than you are in helping your client.
The laws of intelligent selling:
- The more you learn about the experiences and views of your clients, the more weight they will give to your experience and views.
- People like being asked.
- People like to talk about their life.
- People respect you for asking.
- People feel more important because you asked.
Personal notes to clients - tip sheet
One highly effective tool for connecting with all clients at the personal level, while keeping communication costs down, is the personal update note, inside your client greeting cards. Sharing a little bit of personal information about you and your life - as a person, rather than as an advisor - can help all of your clients get to know the real you better. The better clients feel they know you, the longer the relationship will last.
Here are 15 tips for using the client greeting card well.
1) The client greeting card is a great way to connect with all of your clients, simultaneously, at the all important personal level. This connection can only happen when you add a personal note to your greeting cards. We suggest you add a note of six to eight sentences or so. We’ll show you how to do this without your wrist collapsing. Read on.
2) To reinforce point 1, consider carefully the age-old wisdom of
3) Your note will be memorable and effective, only if it is personal in content. Write about your life, hobbies, travels, family, and pets. Don’t write about business.
4) If you want to promote your business, write a letter. Reserve the greeting card for personal communication only. Business content in a personal card is as bad as a signature-only card. However, you can include a useful value added insert of interest which may well be business related.
5) The P.S. is the highest read part of the card. Don’t forget to use it.
6) The birthday (or account opening anniversary) card, and two personal update notes a year, is the perfect mailing frequency to maintain and cultivate your many client relationships at the personal level. Any more than 3 cards a year is too much. Any less is probably too little.
7) Personal update notes should ideally be spaced about 6 months apart. For example, send one on July 4th, and one again at Christmas, or one at Easter, and another at Thanksgiving.
8) When sending birthday cards to married couples, you need to treat each person in the relationship as a unique individual. Never send the identical birthday card to both of them. Change up the note content as well.
9) Clients want to hear your ‘voice’ when they read your card, so write as you speak. Read your note out loud. If you don’t sound natural, re-write it.
10) Make your sentences easy to read. Cut out all excess verbiage. Simplify.
11) Motherhood stuff like “Have a great year.” or “Isn’t the weather awful lately?” all are a waste of ink. Get real. Be personal. Your clients want to read something about the real you.
12) Always sign the card yourself. Don’t ask your assistant to do that for you. Use a greeting card
13) Never use mailing labels or postage machines for a personal note-card. Each short cut diminishes the personal touch significantly. Laser address your envelopes, and hand apply a real stamp.
14) Your master mailing list should represent the essence of your career’s past and future. Be sure to include not only all of your clients, but also your own personal advisors, key centers of influence, important allies, back office supporters and front office VIPs. Warning: don’t cheap out and just send the cards to a certain percentage of your clients. No matter how well you have segmented your clients, the C’s are going to know the A’s, and since your client list is ‘a small world’, this means that you will hurt or disappoint those C’s and D’s who didn’t get a card, but do know a client who received one. Besides, what are you doing with clients that you can’t afford to spend $10 a year on? Fire them if they aren’t worth a card!
15) A good rule of thumb for who should and shouldn’t be on your greeting card mailing list? The people who belong on your personal mailing list are those who know your voice on the phone. We suggest you keep 99% of your prospects off this personal relationship list.
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