Do you find it necessary to adjust the complaint of a client or a customer? A diplomatic letter at the first intimation of dissatisfaction will save many an order from cancellation. 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 mail-order 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 mail-order 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?"