In the mail, addressed to my wife, came a brown envelope the size that would carry a note or a greeting card. Neatly addressed, nice printing. Return address provided in the upper left-hand corner. Beautiful! When my wife opened it, there was nothing inside. Completely empty.

“See what you can find out about this?”, she asked me.

I went online, looked for the address, and discovered it was an apartment building. Dead end…. and we were really curious: There are plenty of reasons in our lives at this point for which a card would be appropriate but who sent this? Why? Would the sender expect a response? How could we respond? What are the consequences of not responding? Are we missing out on something?

20 years ago, one of my consultant friends shared a similar story with me.

He was at that time selling software to his clients – a semi-automated drip communications program that generated physical letters his clients would send to their customers or prospects. A three-letter “thank you for being our customer” series. A five-letter “reasons we should really talk” series. A three-letter “you should know…” series. A four-letter “you’re really missing out if we don’t…” series. And so on.

If his clients needed assistance, he would help them draft the letters for each series, program the letter sequences and timing, assign the series to each client or prospect, and start executing their programs. Generally, his clients tasked an administrative assistant of some kind to manage the weekly process – generate the letters, stuff them in envelopes, address and stamp the envelopes, and mail them.

One of his clients called him to say that he had hired one of his own teen-aged children to handle the mailing program, a few hours a week. He had trained his teenager on the software, provided a list of names, and gone off about his business, leaving his teenager to run the program each week. He would ask, occasionally, “How’s it going?” Came the response, “Fine, dad.”

After some weeks went by, he got a call from one of his A-list prospects: “Hey, Bob, I’ve been receiving a series of envelopes from your company inside each of which I’ve found a single sheet of your letterhead, blank, nothing on it. Plain white paper! So, I was just curious: What’s this all about?”

[Blank letterhead!!!! The kid had forgotten how to trigger the prospecting letters built into the software and he didn’t want to tell his dad. So, he’d just sent blank letterhead.]

My client’s client thought fast enough to say, “I’m glad you called, I’ve been looking forward to talking to you about that”. And a nice contract evolved. Brilliant!

No word on the kid.

Nick Miller and Clarity train banks and bankers to attract and develop deeper relationships with small businesses. Many more Sales Thoughts like this and a host of other articles and resources at https://clarityadvantage.com/knowledge-center/ .