Handwritten Notes

There is power in a handwritten note. Recognition doesn't need to be expensive. It just needs to be consistent. A notepad costs little but can be one of the most powerful tools in building a culture. A handwritten note from a leader can become someone’s treasured document. People keep them, sometimes for a lifetime. I have a file at my home of every handwritten note that any leader, manager or owner to whom I reported ever gave me. That file is thin – not because I wasn't a good performer, but because company leaders rarely write such notes. 

I made it a point to send a note to each of my top fifty salespeople each month. "Hey, Bob, here you are once again in the top fifty of our 2,600 sales people. Six of the last seven months you've been in the top fifty. That tells me your customers appreciate you – and we do, too. The next time I'm out in your area, let's go out and have a beer or two together. Thanks for everything you do. Jack." Later, when I went out in the field, I often would see my notes hanging in work stations.

In my Buffalo, New York, office, I walked in and saw a collection of my notes in glass frame in a hallway called the Hall of Fame. I walked into my Colorado Springs office, and a new hire introduced himself. “Look in my eyes,” he said as he shook my hand. “My name is Bill Smith. I'm a new sales guy, and I want you to know that before the end of the year, you’ll be sending one of those notes to Bill Smith.”

I went back to my hotel room at about 9:30 that night. The amount of emails and voice mails that I had to address in an organization of 2,600 people was enormous, but I put my phone down and sat down to write 10 handwritten notes before I dealt with any of those emails or voicemails.

If I had attended to the emails and voicemails first, I might not have gotten to the handwritten notes until midnight – and by then I might have been thinking about my early flight the next morning and decided I was too tired and would write them some other time. When does some other time come? Never. What's the difference between the emails and the voicemails and the handwritten notes? The handwritten notes are important. The emails and voicemails are urgent. My competitors were addressing the urgent, while I was addressing the important. That is the magic.

Excerpt Hyper Sales Growth