Tips of the Trade: Why Handwritten Notes Work

By Colleen Wainwright, marketing-mentor.com

After visiting an interesting post on how people start their work days, I blogged about it and an even more interesting thing happened (because that’s how the interwebs work!). A commenter followed up on my surprise over the effectiveness of handwritten notes with some pretty astonishing claims. So, I followed up with him, and Mike Kaselnak of HOARD Clients System, Inc., sent back a detailed account of his experiences with handwritten communication, along with good support and rationale...

I am a commodity. Financial advisors are a commodity. We like to think that we aren’t, but we are. We all look the same to the public. We all sell the same things. Our products all cost the same (we can’t put things on sale like retailers to pump up our business).

We are all basically proficient at being financial advisors much the same as dentists are all proficient at dentistry. We don’t all flock to a dentist because he is the “best.” We go to a dentist simply because we needed one. He or she had an office close to our home and they were as good, in our eyes, as any other dentist. Sorry, but for most people, that is about the same amount of time and effort they put into choosing a financial advisor.

No wonder I had never made more than $50,000 a year in my 12 years as a financial planner. I tried everything and it all kind of worked, just not enough for me to make more than $50,000 a year.

I tried:

•Seminars—Expensive and risky. One failed workshop and I was $5,000 in the hole. Three failed workshops and I could be out of business.

•Newsletters—Sent out thousands and they always seem to generate enough business to pay for themselves…just.