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A couple of weeks ago I met with an old friend and an associate of his in London. This associate (I’ll call him Mark) was setting up a new business and the conversation centred mainly around how he could maximise the number of new customers he could get during his first 5-6 weeks of opening. I enjoyed the chat but thought nothing more about it until two days later…
…when a hand written thank you note arrived from Mark. It lifted my whole day.
Later that week I heard another story about a waiter in a large restaurant chain who had taken to sending personalised ‘thank-you’ notes to customers. Guess what, the customers go back and visit and they tell lots of their friends about this amazing thing that happened, I got a personalised thank you note from a waiter in this restaurant…
So why are thank you notes so magical? Well, for one thing, we don’t get many of them and the ones we do get tend to be pretty bland – some are even templated. The best one’s are the one’s you never expect and are personal to you – like Marks.
Anyhow, I reckon there are two big lessons here:
- Just send thank you notes
- Send them from a real person – ‘from everyone at Smith & co’ just doesn’t cut it.
Here are some more ideas to consider:
- Make it personal. Connect with the person. Often we get something like this:
'Thank you for meeting with me yesterday. It was very interesting to learn about your company and hear about your objectives…’
How about this, instead:
'Visiting you yesterday was a real treat. Mike’s a character and your whole staff is so enthusiastic. What a great idea to have the meeting out on your patio…’
- Mention specifics, so it doesn’t appear like a standard letter.
’When Mike talked about Jaguar’s direct mail programme I realised it was very close to what we’re doing…’
- Let your personallity shine through
’After I left you, I decided to forget about going back to the office. I popped into a Starbuck’s and, in between the latte and biscotti, thought about the new business idea we had discussed…’
- Write it by hand – if your handwriting is legible! It makes it so much more personal…
- Do it immediately. If people go out of their way to help you, or bought something from you, or did something that made your day, write the note as soon as possible and make it personal
Here’s a final thought:
If everyone in your business sent just 2-3 personal, hand-written thank you notes to your customers or your suppliers, say, every week – what would be the cumulative impact of peoples perception of your business?
And wouldn’t the world be just a tiny bit better because of it?
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