This time of year always makes me think about relationships, both personal and professional.

Just like personal life, business relationships are a two-way street, and you’ll get out of them what you put in.

Lasting, loyal client relationships don’t just happen by accident. You have to put in the time, and build the trust necessary to be a valued resource for your clients, leading to repeat and referral business down the road.

Apropos perhaps of it being the season, I fell on reflecting on client outreach methods, and my experiences with their effectiveness.

Some of you will dismiss writing Thank You Cards as corny, but I assert that I think they’re the single most effective outreach tool at my disposal.

Looking back over the years, sincerely written “Thank You” cards have delivered more positive return than any other outreach.

I think that’s because in today’s society they’re a rarity. The number of actual thank you cards I’ve received from salesmen I’ve bought things from in the last twenty years I can count on one hand.

I’ve received plenty of mass-printed, impersonal thank you cards from car dealers and furniture and appliance stores, but they don’t count.

If as a sales professional you diligently hand-write and send thank you cards on a regular basis, you’ve set yourself up above virtually all of your competitors, and made yourself memorable.

I want to digress here, since it’s the holiday season and talk about Christmas cards.

I don’t like them.

I mean, I like Christmas, and I like Christmas cards, at least the ones with nice art.

But for some reason Christmas and Happy Holidays cards have never produced any measurable return from clients.

Not just in terms of repeat or referral business, I’ve seldom even had a client say “thank you for the nice Christmas card.”

I admit that this is a totally unscientific sample size of one sales guy, but this is what I’ve observed.

I’ll stick to writing thank you notes year round.