Not that I tend to disagree much with Seth Godin, but I particularly appreciated this post regarding thank you notes:

I got a form thank you note from a clothing store in the mail yesterday. It's pretty clear every customer gets one.

I think that's a little like writing a thank you note on the back of a check when you get it for your bar mitzvah.

Man, I'm glad I'm not the only one who can't stand these one-size-fits-all forms of correspondence. I get the same standard note from my insurance agent every few months, thanking me for my business and blah blah blah, please contact me if there's anything else I can sell you do for you.

While Godin admits that a genuine thank you note is hard to pull off when you're selling things to people all day long (or have numerous clients to keep track of), he also says that a thank you really isn't a thank you unless it's "real, personal and honest."

But not sending a thank you note to clients is bad form, right? It's been ingrained into your head that as a sales professional, thanking your clients is an important part of sustaining your client base. Your mentors are right—thank yous are important and I'm not going to sit here and tell you to scrap them. But would it be that painstaking to breathe some new life into your thank you cards? Or maybe purchase a few different varieties of thank you cards? Or maybe print up some thank you cards with a little personality and individuality [gasp!]?

Why am I so worked up over thank you cards? As a lover of old school correspondence (paper letters, cards, etc.), I always give serious thought to whatever I send out. And by serious I mean I can spend an entire afternoon in a paper store. Why? Because whatever I send has to be personal; it has to say exactly what I want it to say and it has to represent exactly who I am. And while I'm not suggesting that you spend all afternoon in a paper store, I am suggesting that you put a little more thought into what you're sending to clients. Your correspondence represents you, after all.

Oh...and let's not forget it's one more way to set yourself apart from your competitors who remain satisfied with the status quo. :)