In the era of Twitter and 140 characters, a lot of people will glance at a letter on letterhead and decide to give it a quick read before discarding it. How can you actually slow them down so that they read your letter with a little more attention?
Here are two strategies that worked for me and the advisors I coach:
- On your letterhead, print your letter upside down. They are completely stopped in their tracks by this. Now make sure you reference the upside-down printing so that they know it wasn’t a mistake. You could say something like, “Yep, upside down is the new right-side up apparently.” Or “This will turn what you thought on its head.” Or, simply, “Yep, I printed this upside down to make sure you read this.”
- Fill the letter with something cheap to give it some lumps. Send a quarter and say, “Apparently your phone isn’t working, so I thought I’d send you this to get hold of me on a payphone… good luck finding one!” Or send a shoestring that read, “It’s a good thing that investing can be just as exciting as buying shoelaces!” Another could be written on an eraser and says, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a way to erase any investing mistakes we made… both now and in the future?”
Are these outside the norm? YES! YES! YES! We are a commodity! Everybody looks and sounds the same. We all make similar promises and discuss similar topics. DARE TO BE DIFFERENT if you want to capture someone’s interest!