THESE CARDS MEAN BUSINESS; GREETINGS WITH ZING; CONSULTANT TURNS CLIENT STRATEGY INTO INDEPENDENT ENTERPRISE.

Byline: Enrique Rivero Daily News Staff Writer

Financial consultant Greg Zedlar just wanted to find a more eye-catching, keep-them-coming-back way to say ``Thank you'' when he started designing greeting cards to send to his clients.

``I wanted to send something that when you looked at it you would say, `Wow,' '' said Zedlar, 31.

Now a strictly professional strategy has become a full-fledged, independent business that's wowing Wall Street.

Zedlar's cards have led to a brief story in The Wall Street Journal and a segment on CNN earlier this week that have resulted in 150 calls for catalogs. So far, he's sold 22,000 cards at an average of $1.32 each since May 5, when he began selling the 32-card series, which ranges from straightforward to humorous.

``The greatest thing is that now that we're in the market, clients are going, `Here's an idea, here's an idea,' '' said Zedlar, who runs the greeting-card business Conceptual Thinking Inc. from his Burbank home. ``No matter how many focus groups you have, there is nothing like a paying customer saying his likes and dislikes.''

While not constituting a huge part of the market, business greeting cards will likely be more widely used as companies try to become more employee- and customer-friendly, said Marianne McDermott, executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Greeting Card Association.

``I just think it's something more businesses are doing than they've ever done before because it pays off,'' McDermott said.

For the past three years, Kansas City, Mo.-based Hallmark Cards Inc. has been developing the cards for clients such as Blue Cross, said Don Neal, director of marketing, business development and strategic alliance for the Hallmark Business Expressions division.

So far it's a small part of Hallmark's overall operation, representing less than 1 percent of the company's $3.8 billion in annual revenue, Neal said.

But companies recognize that it is much more costly to acquire new clients than to retain existing ones, and they're turning to customer-friendly methods such as greeting cards to make them feel more valued.

``I think this has the potential to be one of the largest growth areas of Hallmark cards,'' Neal said.

In July 1996, Zedlar took time off from his job as a senior financial adviser with American Express Financial Advisors in Glendale to develop his business. He said he worked up to 75 hours a week on research, development and marketing.

He invested $85,000 - most of it from his savings and about 20 percent from family members - to cover computers, software, printing and other costs for the business, which he runs with one assistant.

Zedlar has had plenty of help from family, friends and even complete strangers from whom he's solicited comments about the cards' style and content. The most popular, generating about 21 percent of total sales, is one picturing a peaceful, snow-covered cemetery. The card, written by his brother Jeff, reads: ``Someday we will both be dead'' on the outside and ``Let's do some business before it's too late'' inside.

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Photo: (Color) Assistant Mike Sobray, left, displays some of Greg Zedlar's business-themed greeting cards.

John McCoy/Daily News