My secretary said that I had missed a call from a very angry man. I didn’t recognize his name and the area code was from the Toledo area. I had no idea who he was or why he was so upset. He started to yell as soon as he picked up the phone. He wanted to know why I had sent a birthday card to his mother who had died months earlier. He was truly offended by the “sales pitch”. I didn’t know him, but I did know his mother. She had briefly been a client, about ten years before in the early 1990’s, when she had been between jobs. We had even gone out on a few dates. But she couldn’t find suitable employment in Cleveland, so she moved to the Toledo area to be near her daughter and grandchild. I didn’t know she had had a son. I certainly didn’t know that she had died. I saw no reason to go into too much detail. I just let him know that she and I had been friends and how once a year I got to take a moment to think of her. That seemed to resolve his anger. We never spoke again.
I have been sending birthday cards to my clients since I started with Prudential in 1979. I order them, a thousand at a time, from Posty Cards of Kansas City. They are not pre-signed or pre-addressed. The envelopes are preprinted with my return address. I personally address every envelope. I personally sign every card. This is a point of pride. It has always been important to me. The marketing gurus call this a soft contact. It is much more to me than advertising. That card is the tangible evidence that there is a real person behind that policy number and an equally real person promising to service their needs.
This year’s holiday card, also from Posty Cards, included a very important annual letter. This year’s letter let my clients know that I have decided to close my office at the end of July. I still have a little over four months to prepare for this transition to my successors, Angela Elias and Carol Fyffe. Today was an important part, at least emotionally, of this move. I addressed and signed the last of the birthday cards today. I had decided that when they ran out, they ran out. Today is the day. These last cards will be mailed in the next few weeks. I have always tried to work a couple of weeks ahead.
I could see these people, every one of them, as I addressed their cards. Some I’ve known for decades. One of these last cards will be going to my friend, Rich. He and his wife have always thanked me for their cards, one time stopping Sally and I in Beachwood Place Mall. One of the last of these cards is going to someone I met in December. Same card. Same level of importance.
Did every client appreciate or even care that I sent them a birthday card? Did they all realize that the cards were intentionally mailed 10 days prior to their birthday? Of course not. That’s not the point. The point is that I cared, that this was just another part of the way I felt that I should do my chosen profession. And as so many of us grew old together, the thought that this could be the last birthday we celebrated “together” was inescapable. It has been over twenty years since I received the call from the angry son. Relationships and even the act of contacting someone can have both risks and rewards.
Today was my last business birthday card. I will miss these moments.
Dave
Picture – The Last Cards – David L Cunix