Gratitude

Thank you.  Thank you for reading this.  Thank you for being loyal clients.  Most of us say and write (in emails) thank you many times every day.  Thank yous have become a bit diluted over email when there are several of us copied on the same message and we get caught up thanking one another for our thank yous.  We recently came upon a team that included “NTN” in their email correspondence. This is the acronym for “No Thanks Necessary,” indicating that the thank yous had become annoying.  

Isn’t “thank you” one of the magic words?  An old school approach that may be more relevant than ever with all these diluted thank yous is the hand written thank you note.  It’s sincere and genuine. Here is how and why top performers use handwritten notes:

• Give full thanks.  Part of the reason “thank you” only emails aren’t appreciated is that in some cases it’s not clear exactly what it was that earned the gratitude.  In a handwritten note, you usually say a bit more than “thank you.” You usually tell the person specifically why you’re grateful. “Thank you for your extra time and advice to help us win the business.  We followed your recommendation in our proposal and it was well received.” They’ll appreciate this more and may be more likely to do whatever they did again in the future.

• Be creative.  Sometimes the pushback with a handwritten note is that it’s not as immediate as an email.  After the last job interview I had (a long time ago), I went to my car, hand wrote a thank you note, then walked back into the office and handed it to the assistant and asked:  “Can you please make sure Greg gets this before the end of the day?” People don’t usually save your “thank you” only emails. They will sometimes hold on to these notes you write by hand.

• Be ready.  Keep thank you notes with you at all times.  They’re not that heavy. For those of you that fly a lot, write one before the plane reaches 10,000 feet.  When your call or meeting ends 10 minutes early, don’t go to your favorite social media outlet, write a thank you.  When you have time in between meetings and you’re at a coffee shop, pull out a note and thank your colleague, friend, client, prospect, etc.

Thank you mom for sending us this article from the NY Times that inspired this message.  You deserve a hand written thank you and then some.  Let’s each commit to at least 1 hand written thank you this month.  Who are you going to thank? Thank YOU.