Business correspondence: three useful hints to write effective business letters

  

Every piece of business correspondence is a sales tool. When you write to a customer, even about such a simple matter as confirming a delivey date, your correspondence is telling about you and your company. It means that a weak or confusing communication representes you and your company poorly.

         Here are three useful hints to write effective business communications, according to The Random House Book of Contemporary Business Letters;.

Before you begin, decide whether you should be writing at all.

This might seem like a foolish point, but it isn´t. Writing is too time-consuming to  engage in frivolously.

The key question is: “What do I want the reader to do after he or she read this?”

If you can´t answer this question, you might reconsider whether you should write at all.

Be prepared!

It is impossible to write a well-reasoned letter or memo without preliminar thought. You need to focus on the decision maker, the person who will take action on what you are writing, and write with that person´s needs in mind. Whether that person is a customer, a supplier, a creditor, a member of your staff, or your boss, aim your letter at the intended reader. The best way to achieve this is to picture the person in your mind as you write.

Be natural.

Letter writing don´t have the stilted, formal sound it once did. Don´t use slang, but do write in a conversational style, similar to the way you speak. Even contractions like “I´ve” and “let´s” accurately reflect the way people converse, and are perfectly acceptable in written communications today. Read your letter or memo aloud. If it sounds stiff, it probably is! Change it so that it sounds more natural.

Here are some model letters (beginnings): 

Dear Peter,

It was a pleasure meeting you last week, and I thank you for the opportunity to introduce you to our insurance plans. I hope you have had the chance to look over the information on family protection, retirement income, and education plan that I left with you.

 

Dear Mr. Karl:

It was a pleasure meeting with you last Friday. I´m glad we had the opportunity to discuss and, I hope, resolve some of the problems you had with our last three shipments. As I mentioned, we.....

 

Dear Mrs. Schwarz:

We were sorry to see that your name has not been on our list of servisse contract renewals for the past six months. If you had a problem with [name of company/service], we would like to remedy it.

We will call you next week to see if we can answer any questions you might have abou tour services.

We would very much like to welcome you back as a [product] customer.

 

Bibliographic reference: 

The Random House book of contemporary business letters/Strategic Communications, edited by Stephen P. Elliott, Random House, New York.