Robert Collier - The Robert Collier Letter Book

And to quickly find out if men really want to save 25% on the best tires that can be made, he is having us rush out this August letter to a few selected car owners.

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We have just 790 of these double-texture, all wool Great coats to sell at this low price. When they are gone, your chance to save on your Winter Ulster will go with them. But while these 790 last, you can get as perfect-fitting, as good-looking, as fine-quality a Winter Overcoat as ever you would want to wear, at an almost unheard-of bargain.

As Resident Buyers for a number of out-of-town stores, we are making the rounds of the manufacturers every day, and whenever they bring out some "special," whenever they close out some small lot, whenever they finish copying some designer's model-gown, we get it!

You know yourself what bargains you can pick up even in the stores just by shopping around. Imagine, then, what we can do when we are daily shopping among the manufacturer's themselves. A fourth off, a third off, even a half off the regular wholesale price is nothing unusual, for manufacturer's have no time to bother with these small lots, and they give them to us at practically our own price.

The result is that we can offer you some of the season's loveliest and most distinctive models, in all sizes, in the most fashionable colors and materials, at actually less than their regular wholesale prices!

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Nearly every man can look back—and not so far back with most of us—and recall cases where some little slip lost him opportunity or prestige, cost him the favor of someone whose good opinion he valued, turned what might have been a valuable friendship into enmity or indifference.

But there is no need to lose more such opportunities. For just as a physician may read medicine, just as a lawyer may read law, just so may you now read the science of culture—that science of good breeding which includes etiquette but yet is above and beyond all etiquette.

One of the best opportunities for the use of persuasion is in collection letters. As a matter of fact, it is our opinion that there are only two ways to collect old accounts. The first is persuasion. The second is the threat of court action or loss of credit standing.

Our own idea is that the most effective collection series is one that alternates these two. When you send out a strong threat you frighten a certain number of delinquents into paying, but you make the others so mad they swear they will never pay. Send another threat on top of that and you just make them madder. But use persuasion and you smooth down their fur, get a number of payments, and have things all set for another effective threat.

Here are a few samples of persuasive collection letters:

You remember how Abraham Lincoln walked many weary miles from the grocery store where he earned a mere pittance, in order to bring to a poor old woman the few cents change she had forgotten and left on the counter.

And how Mark Twain, because his name happened to be associated with that of an unsuccessful company, took all its heavy debts upon himself, and, though an old man, paid every one.

It is this "I-will-owe-no-man-a-penny" spirit that builds up and strengthens selfrespect and personal integrity—and makes a credit reputation that bulwarks a man in time of need. It is because we find just such good old-fashioned honesty as this in 99% of the folks with whom we do business, that we feel sure of the payment of your account, even though it has been neglected recently.

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Unless you have conducted a similar business, you can hardly conceive of the mass of detail involved in handling many thousands of these $1 and $2 accounts. The difference between profit and loss on such a business depends upon the promptness of collections more than on any other one thing. I know you will not consciously be instrumental in working a hardship on any concern with which you do business, and I am quite sure that when you see your failure to remit promptly is doing just that, you will send me a check by return mail.

Back in the Stone Age, records were carved on a stone slab. When the debt was due, Mr. Creditor presented the account in a very polite fashion—holding the slab in one hand while in the other he carried his stone mallet. The debtor had no alternative.

Then civilization moved on until the debtor’s prison was the deciding factor as to whether a debtor would pay or not. But now it is a different proposition— credit. Every kind of business, large or small, must build its foundation on its credit standing. Concerns liquidating their obligations at maturity build their credit standing to the highest point attainable, while those who allow their obligations to run along month after month without payment, decrease their credit standing until it is nearly obliterated.

Again, as perhaps in your case, there is the business man who is too busy with matters of more importance, and the work of looking after his financial and accounting details is delegated to some other person who lets these important factors ride without considering the detrimental effect they have on your credit standing.

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Your name in red ink on our records is something we want to avoid. You do, too, I am sure. Here is the way the account now stands:

John Johnson—Bills Receivable—$25.00

But unless we receive a check by the 17th, here is the way our book-keeping department will have to enter it.

(Red Ink) John Johnson—Account Overdue $25.00

The bad feature about this entry is the effect it has on our credit man, and the credit men of all the other stores that belong to our Association. But then your check before the 17th prevents all this.

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The records in the case show that your account has been PAST DUE for 90 days, and that you have failed to return the goods or make payment, or to advise the Blank Company of cause for delay. The records also show that though written repeatedly, you have shown no inclination to liquidate your indebtedness. You have COMPELLED them to turn the account over to the Legal Department to take such action as may protect the interests of the company.

That you may be fully cognizant of the law, I wish to advise you that obtaining goods with an intent to defraud constitutes a criminal act and if such fraud is proved, the person committing it is liable to imprisonment.

Your case is now on the records of the Legal Department, and will come up for attention in one week unless you make remittance to the Blank Company.

It is to be hoped you will, for your own protection, make payment if you desire to avoid the annoyance, publicity and cost of a lawsuit. You remember a famous English Jurist is reported to have said that if a man claimed the coat on his back, and threatened to sue him for it, he'd give him the coat rather than risk losing his waistcoat, too, in defending the lawsuit.

If that is true when you are in the right, how much more true it must be when the facts are so strongly against you as in the present case!

Summed up, arousing the right motive comes down to making the reader want what you have to offer, whether that be merchandise or money or credit or merely a clean bill of health—not merely for what it is, but for what it will do for him! When you can get him thinking along those lines, when you can bring home to him the advantages that will accrue to him from doing as you wish, in so effective a way that he wants these more than anything or any trouble they may cost him, then you can feel that you have demonstrated the gentle art of exercising persuasion.

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Out in a little town in northwestern Pennsylvania is a mail order house which built a business from scratch, to over a million dollars a year on one basis only—proof.