A woman who owed a demolition service approached me after my marketing presentation to her business group with an unusual request: She wanted me to write her a letter of introduction to the mayor of her municipality. The letter’s purpose? To sell him on the idea of forming a public-private joint venture to help city officials rehabilitate distressed residential areas.
The letter had to communicate both her sense of public pride as a citizen and her business savvy as someone who had been in the demolition business for a long time. The new mayor had just been elected on a platform of urban renewal, so the time to pitch this idea was now, before he became buried in other priorities.