My great idea for the week is a marketing idea. I want you to send the following letter with a boomerang to every client you have lost in the last two years.

PLEASE COME BACK!

Dear Mr. and Mrs.

Hello. I hope this letter finds you and your family doing well in 2008. Last year was a good year for us, but it would have been better with you as a client!

Maybe you had a boomerang when you were a child – I know I did. As you know, the boomerang has a unique, but simple design that, when skillfully thrown, returns back “home.” And that’s what I hope happens between Grunder Landscaping and you. We want to work with you in 2008.

Grunder Landscaping has worked hard again this past year improving our services. Our team has grown and I’m proud to say we now have twelve Ohio Certified Nursery Technicians. We have added more equipment, making our company more efficient and competitive, but most of all there’s a lot that hasn’t changed. Like our attitude and our neat and professional team members.

When you do business with Grunder Landscaping, you can have confidence knowing that we care about you and your landscaping. I know we’re not perfect, but I do know we make things right. You can choose Grunder Landscaping knowing that we value your business and have a team of professionals committed to your satisfaction.

Enclosed is a Summer Clean Up contract for 2008. Please take a moment and look it over and call me personally if you’d like to talk. We want your business back!

Cordially,

Martin J. Grunder, Jr.
President & CEO

You can get the plastic boomerangs made with your logo on them. Just about any promotions company in your area can help you or you could even order this product online.

Many times when you make it easy for an old client to come back, they will. If you have the guts to try this one, I believe it will work well for you.

This week I want you to consider using the following letter I just sent to my clients last week. I had to make some comments on the fuel surcharges and I wanted to thank my clients by doing something small like sending them some stamps. Stamps!? Guess you’ll have to read the letter to figure out what I’m talking about. Here’s the letter:

Dear Valued Client,

Hello! I hope that this letter finds you well. As you know, gas prices have risen to record levels and it is affecting our business. We have done everything we know to do to try and save on fuel. I won’t bore you with all the details. But I wanted to let you know that we are not going to add a fuel surcharge at this time. I don’t like it when our vendors place them on us and we will continue to try and avoid any kind of increase in our prices to you. However, in the future, we may not have a choice. Here’s to hoping something gets worked out to where fuel prices can stabilize. I know we would all like that!

Since all of us need a break and since we greatly appreciate your support, I have enclosed some one-cent stamps. If you’re like my family, we had a bunch of 41-cent stamps and had to run to the post office and buy some one-cent stamps so we could get our mail out. While driving over to the post office, burning $4.00/gallon fuel, I thought I estimated it was going to cost me $6.00 to buy 30 cents worth of stamps. So I just saved you a trip and some money and that’s a beautiful thing.

Thanks for your business and your support; it means a lot to me.

Cordially,

Martin J. Grunder, Jr.
President

This simple, little letter was sent to our clients and it went over with a huge bang! I cannot believe the amount of positive feedback we have gotten from it. I know you’ll receive the same if you try it. Talk to you next week.

This week’s Great Idea comes all the way from China.As you may or may not know, my book The 9 Super Simple Steps to Entrepreneurial Success is printed in three languages; one of them is Chinese. Over a year ago, I received a very uplifting message from Qiqi, a young Chinese student who bought my book and told me about his entrepreneurial aspirations.

I am pleased to report that Qiqi and his friend Hige are close to launching a magazine. The magazine is geared towards college students and is about restaurants, and their plan is for the restaurants to sponsor the magazine. They plan on donating all the profits to help those in China affected by the earthquakes. I wish them nothing but good luck.



My great idea for the week is to keep on pushing, keep on trying. Here are two young, Chinese students who don’t speak English very well, trying to get ahead, talking with me on the other side of the world via the internet! It is people with the spirit of Qiqi and Hige that make our world a great place. If these two can think positively, why can’t all of us do the same? If you pick up the paper or listen to the news, there’s not a lot to get excited about. My friend Greg tells me he’s fine as long as he doesn’t watch or listen to the news. I hate to agree with this, but I think he’s right.Get up early, get something done, think positively, and find an opportunity. Don’t just sit tight and wait for the sky to fall; be like Qiqi and Hige and try something! If you do nothing, you can expect to get nothing.

Do you drive many hours every week? Do you listen to music? How about making your drive more productive by listening to some books on CD or on your iPod? Or even better yet, how about listening to some words of wisdom from my favorite teacher, Dr. John Maxwell. I have been fortunate to get to know John and he has made a big impact on my life. I encourage you to visit his website at www.johnmaxwell.com and purchase one of his programs and turn your drive time or even mowing time into an educational experience like no other. I particularly recommend The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You.

I have a pretty good CD out on being a great team player as well titled There is No I in Team; if you purchase this CD, or any of my CDs for that matter, before June 30th, I’ll send you two of my wristbands free! They are a great thing to give to a young person in your life.

Get something to listen to this week besides music! Your mind will be glad you did!

“Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
- Harvey Mackay, author and professional speaker

My colleague is so right with that quote. Passion should drive all that you are doing and if you don’t like what you’re doing, please help yourself and quit and find something that you can get excited about. You’ll be better off for it and so will all who are around you.

By the way, it’s never too late to change careers and try new things. At age 55 Ronald Reagan starred in a movie called Bedtime for Bonzo; it was awful; 15 short years later he would be president. At age 47 Sam Walton had 2 stores; by the time he died, there were almost 2,000 stores (including Sam’s Clubs). The point is – happiness is what we all ought to be seeking constantly.

If you don’t like your job, or parts of your job, take some steps this month, this week, to change. A happy, passionate person is the most effective person in the world. And the more effective you are, the greater your chances are for making money. Making money the natural way, the easy way, doing something you love, and consequently being so good at it, people want to do business with you!