Business Correspondence | Page 4

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

CHAPTER 2
">
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_
* * * * *
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