How do you send information to your clients?

Posted on 20. Jan, 2012 by Leonie Alaimo in Branding, Business Tools, Marketing, Productivity, Public Relations, Sales, Team

I often get a Microsoft Word file from clients and business associates. These could be sent because the client or business associate need to send information to me, but I also have received Word files that are invoices or contracts. So … you might be thinking, “what wrong with that”? There could be nothing wrong with it, and it would be done thousands of times a day. Here are the reasons I wouldn’t do it:

1. MS Word formatting is linked to the default printer on your computer. This means that when you send the document to your client, and they have a different printer, the Word document will reformat itself. This potentially could make the document look awful with information in the incorrect places. Not too professional!
2. The fonts you use in the document will only look correct if the recipient has the same fonts on their computer. Strange thought? If you’re using the most common fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman there probably won’t be any problem with your document and it will show correctly, however if you use a font that the recipient does not have on their computer, then there are problems. For example, if you use a script font for your heading and a substitute font is used, your document could look very unprofessional.
3. Have you ever thought what could happen if you sent through a contract to a client which you required them to sign and return to you?  You know …. I like and trust people and would hope that others would do the right thing by me, but unfortunately in this world we have people who are unethical, unscrupulous and well … just plain nasty. What if you had one of those kinds as a client and you had sent through the Word document for them to sign and return to you … and they changed some wording on the document before they signed it and returned it to you? Not nice thoughts, but could happen.
4. The same goes for invoices which are in Word (or sometimes I get them as an Excel spreadsheet). The same thing could happen here. While you might have a copy of what you sent on your computer, numbers could be changed prior to the customer paying you. This is probably less likely to happen, however it is something I wanted to bring to your attention .. so that you’ll never be caught.
5. You’re sending a 20 page document to a professional print shop because you require 30 copies of this document for the workshop you’re running tomorrow. Just go back and look at items 1. and 2. This document will look great on your computer, and you’ll print one out to have a look and it will be all good. Send it to the printer and things could change. Now any printer worth their “salt” would check over a document prior to printing, however it could still look good ….. but there is something changed that you don’t like. A box has moved to another page that will look OK to the printer (they don’t know your product or topic), but it will make your document totally wrong. The printer prints it, you collect it, and you don’t notice the error until you’re already running the workshop.

So then, what should I send to my clients?

It’s easy. Create your file in whichever program you choose. Then when it’s ready, make your file into a PDF. A pdf is a Portable Document Format created by Adobe some years ago. It can be opened by anyone on any computer so long as they have Acrobat Reader which is a free download from Adobe.

Learn how to create your pdf here https://www.acrobat.com/createpdf/en/home.html

Get Adobe pdf reader here http://get.adobe.com/reader/

What type of file do you sent to your clients and associates?