I got in the mail today a catalog from Harry’s Orchards, a company that sells premium fruit by mail.

The guarantee on the inside front cover says that the product comes with their “bonded guarantee of your complete satisfaction.”

“Bonded guarantee” sounds impressive but lacks specifics.

So I called, and it turns out that there is almost NO guarantee of satisfaction.

If you order the delicious looking fruit photographed in the catalog, but it turns out to be not so delicious, you’re stuck with it: Harry’s won’t give you your money back.

Would you still buy knowing that their “bonded guarantee” offers no protection against potential dissatisfaction with quality or taste.

(The customer service rep did tell me they’d refund my money if the fruit was rotten, but that wasn’t my concern.)

Or would you, like me, pass Harry’s Orchards by … and get your oranges and grapefruits at the grocery store?

Often-quoted advice to writers is to write the way people talk.

To me, that means using the language your readers would use when talking about the same subject you are writing to them about.

A case in point is a fundraising letter I got today from a public radio station featuring soft and eclectic rock and pop.

The letter begins:

“Dear Neighbor: I have a feeling you’re a smart media consumer.”

Let me ask you. When you turn on your radio to listen to music, do you think of yourself as a “media consumer”?

Or as someone who likes to listen to music on the radio?

The fundraising copywriter has taken a simple concept and buried it in jargon alien to the reader.

If I were asked to edit this letter, my opening might read:

“Dear Music Lover: Do you ever wish, when you turn on the radio, that they’d play OUR music? You know the kind of music I mean … etc.”

Do you prefer my version or their version — and why?

Or, rewrite it with your own lead.

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After 8 years, Foxtons, the NJ-based discount real estate company, is planning to shut its doors forever, and may file bankruptcy.

And I couldn’t be happier.

Glenn Cohen made a splash when he founded Foxtons in 1999 promising to save home buyers and sellers money.

How?

By cutting their commission to just 2% … one-third of the standard 6% commission.

Their collapse is a much-needed reminder that discounting — competing based on price — is a lousy long-term business strategy.

The average real estate agent working at brokerages charging traditional commissions has a modest income — around $47,000 a year on average.

One-third of $47,000 is $15,667.

What kind of professional do you think you can hire for $15,667 a year?

Discounting stinks as a business strategy, because the more you lower your price, the less money you make.

Eventually, you end up working for peanuts — a terrible way to live — for customers that don’t value your service, experience, or knowledge.

Also, if low price is your only selling point, what happens when the guy across the street undercuts you in a price war?

Low-priced vendors and their employees resent working for so little, which translates into crappy service for the customer.

Nobody wins.

So instead of being the low-priced bidder, think about how you can add value, and by doing so, command average or even premium rates.

You’ll make more money, and attract a better class of clientele, who will respect you more and be happier with your service.

Everyone wins.

Ironically, Glenn Cohen was honored in 2002 as one of 10 NJ Entrepreneurs of the year — apparently by a committee that doesn’t know squat about business in the real world.

Source: Lynn, Kathleen, “Foxtons calling it quits,” The Record, 9/28/07, p. B2.

My theory has long been that the replacement of the telephone and face-to-face meetings by e-mail has increased the average American’s writing skills considerably, especially in business.

Reason: in the good old days, managers wrote few letters, because so much labor was involved.

Most didn’t keyboard, so they either wrote by hand or dictated.

The secretary would type the letter, which the manager edited with a red pen — and invariably, it would be typed and retyped 2 or 3 times before approved and mailed.

In my first corporate jobs, the secretaries were so busy, it would often take 2-3 days to get a letter in the mail using this process.

Today, virtually every manager has access to a keyboard … virtually every manager keyboards … and virtually every manager writes multiple e-mails daily.

Based on the notion that writing improves with practice, writing dozens of e-mails a week should turn you into a better writer.

But journalist Janet Malcolm thinks just the opposite is true.

“E-mail is a medium of bad writing,” she categorically states in an article in The New York Review of Books (9/27/07). “Poor word choice is the norm — as is tone deafness.”

She explains that, although e-mail may make us write a lot, most people don’t bother “to write a carefully worded, exclamation-point-free e-mail when the occasion demands.”

So what’s the answer?

Does the sheer amount of writing e-mail usage requires help us improve our writing?

Or is our writing just as bad as ever because people rush every e-mail they write and never take the time to make it good?

I am obsessed with not wasting time and being as productive as I can.

After all, my income is directly linked to my ability to produce quality work at a rapid rate.

This November will mark the 3-year anniversary of the launch of this blog, and the experience has led me to Bly’s Theory of Blogging and Personal Productivity, which states:

“Personal productivity is inversely proportional to time spent blogging.”

Is blogging fun? Yes.

Intellectually stimulating? Can be.

Useful? Opinions vary.

But the more time you spend blogging, the less work you get done.

This leads me to Bly’s Rule of Blogging Time, which states:

“Anyone who blogs more than 10 minutes a day — or more than an hour a week — is spending way too much time reading and writing on blogs.”

What’s your reaction to my Theory and Rule of blogging?

Can one spend too much time — or conversely, too little time — in the blogosphere?

How many hours a week do YOU spend blogging — both writing your own blog, responding to comments on your blog, and participating in discussions on other people’s blogs?

And really, you do it for fun, perhaps for research, or to establish yourself as a thought leader …

But you don’t think blogging is the new Marketing Miracle that’s going to Change the Face of Business As We Know It, right?

A poet once wrote: “Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.”

Not in today’s business culture.

When I entered the corporate workforce in the late 1970s, young kids just out of college — like me — were at the bottom of the food chain.

The top was dominated by gray-haired managers — “20-year-men” as they were called — who’d been with the company for decades.

After all, those decades meant they knew everything — about the job, the products, the market — and I, with mere weeks on the job, knew almost nothing … and therefore could only contribute minimally.

Ironically, now that MY hair is gray and I am approaching my 30th year in direct marketing, age is no longer revered.

Indeed, workers age 50 or more are often discriminated against. Despite their knowledge and experience, no one wants to hire them, for reasons I am not 100% clear about.

I have sat in meetings where I have seen kids in their 20s completely dismiss the contributions of colleagues and vendors who have forgotten more about direct marketing than the kids have learned.

Especially in direct marketing, this makes no sense.

You learn DM through exposure to testing, and the longer you have worked in the field, the more test results you have seen and integrated into your mental bank of knowledge.

So old folks … do you feel I am accurate here? Like Rodney Dangerfield, do we get “no respect” from the young ‘uns?

Kids: Do you learn from and listen to old farts? Or dismiss them as ancient and irrelevant?

Also: Can 20 somethings and 50 somethings work together and get along? Or are the culture gaps too great? (e.g., I don’t own an iPod, Blackberry, Blue Tooth, or Cell Phone, and I couldn’t take and send a digital photo over the Internet if my life depended on it….)

Walked into the CVS in back of my office to pick up today’s paper, as I often do.

But when I tried to walk out after plunking my two quarters next to the register, the sales clerk told me: “Stop!”

“Why?” I asked.

“I have to scan the paper,” she told me, explaining that it was corporate policy.

I looked at the long line in front of the only register with a cashier.

“Can’t I just leave the money and you can scan another paper later?”

“Nope,” she told me. “You have to wait.”

The point?

The CVS violates one of the Sacred Laws of Business.

Namely: when someone wants to give you money, don’t make it difficult for them to do so.

Even if they just want to buy the paper.