Using Handwritten Notes to Develop Business Relationships

At Monoset our mission is to help our customers improve their relationships. One of the key relationships we’ve found – and our customers have confirmed for us – to benefit greatly from handwritten notes and letters is in developing better professional relationships.

In business you often find yourself wanting to meet someone – a new client or customer, a potential mentor who you suspect has been through what you’re going through, or to get to know your boss or colleagues better.

Face to face works great for developing relationships of course, but there are certain times when you need something a bit different because meeting face to face may not work – you might not know the person and don’t yet share a connection, you may have already met the person but want to follow up.

Writing a handwritten note or letter can be a way to break through all the noise of text, email or social media to let a person know that you’re willing to invest in the relationship because you’re willing to commit the time it takes to put pen to paper and mail it.

If you’re looking to develop a new relationship this can be a great way to get the door opened. Cold-intro emails are easy to ignore, but a handwritten note to a company address is unlikely to be intercepted by an assistant, and definitely going to pique the interest of the recipient.

The second main way to strengthen a relationship is to send a note after you’ve met someone in person, at event, conference or otherwise and follow up with a note with a brief message saying how great it was to connect and perhaps sharing a book, article or something else you think they might find interesting based on what you discussed.

You can also set the recipients concerns at ease about getting back to you – with personalized stationery you can share your email, LinkedIn profile, website or any other contact information you’d like. Another tip is to let them know you’ll follow up with them at a particular time.

The main reason we hear for not sending these important notes is “My handwriting isn’t good enough”, well here’s the big secret, there are very few people who have handwriting that looks like you imagine great handwriting should. This isn’t about your handwriting being beautiful, it’s about ensuring that it is legible and your content is appropriate. If however you do want to take some time to brush up, we’ve previously posted about how to improve your handwriting here.

The most important thing to remember is that taking the time to write a note demonstrates that you value the relationship and the gesture is unlikely to go unnoticed. 

If you’ve got a story about how letters opened doors or developed relationships let us know at hello@monoset.com to be in for a chance to be featured on our blog + get a gift from us!