Business Forum: Taking the Sting Out of Remodeling

You have your customer lined up. You have your contract. You have the job started. You have dust. Then you have complaints: “Does it have to be so dusty?”; “Can’t we use the kitchen at all?”; “What’s this thing you’re taking out called, a bearing wall?” At S.M. Jeffries & Co., we try to warn the customer in advance about the unpleasant aspects of remodeling. But we also try to make this message as pleasant as possible. To do that, we use a letter. It’s a friendly one—it even says so in the first line. It’s humorous, too. It’s done on our computer. That way, we