“Every Cheque is a Love Letter”

I’ve had many an interesting client, and Raymond Adam was as interesting as you get.

Ray ran a food arbitrage business, a middleman between suppliers and purchasers. He would parlay group buying power into price breaks for his food-service clients, gaining significant savings.

Once a month he would mail each client a cheque representing his or her savings. For this practice he received a lot of criticism from peers and advisors, mostly related to efficiency. “Ray, why don’t you just charge the discounted amount?” “Ray, this is the twentieth century– it’s time to go electronic!”

Ray would just smile and answer, “Every cheque I mail is a love letter!”

You see, Ray understood that it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. He could have saved a lot of money by going to direct deposit, but he would have lost the magic of his love letters.

Are you communicating data, or are you communicating magic?

(With permission of the Estate of Raymond Adam.)

My blogs (http://www.purposeful.ca/blog)

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