Out of the Blue - A Prospect's Long-Absent Reappearance

I received a call today from a credit union manager, in an area where I used to live. She was interested in me doing a quarterly newsletter for the credit union. I will be calling her back tomorrow morning to give a quote.

Sounds typical, right? It's not. Here's why.

I marketed in that area, and sent her a postcard listing my services...early last year.

Seemingly out of the blue, my postcard marketing turns up a prospect! And it made me think of something I read, lo those many years ago...

In late 2001, when I first began contemplating copywriting as a career, I was reading Peter Bowerman's The Well-Fed Writer. Anyone who knows this book (and its author) knows it to be an extremely well-written tome, chock-full of invaluable advice about starting and running a copywriting business.

In this book there was a brief story about how the author received business from a phone contact he'd made two years before. From a phone call, made and forgotten, Mr. Bowerman gained a client after an impossibly long time (for business, anyway).

Needless to say, I felt about as exhilirated as Mr. Bowerman must have at receiving my call earlier today. So much so, I put aside the blog post I was working on today to write about this. Later in the week I'll talk about The MySpace Generation.

Maybe this post's a thank-you to the big world out there, for a project popping up unbidden. Maybe it's simply an observation about how quirky the business sphere really is in our lives. In either case, I hope you enjoyed the story. Maybe you've had a client approach you in a similar manner? Tell us about it!

Tags: thank you prospecting stories copywriting clients credit union