Business Correspondence by Anonymous (speld decodable readers .TXT) đź“–
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“Thanking you for your inquiry and hoping to be favored with your order, and assuring you it will be fully appreciated and receive our careful attention, we are.”
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Such a paragraph pulls few orders. Compare the foregoing with the one that fairly galvanizes the reader into immediate action:
“Send us a $2.00 bill now. If you are not convinced that this file is the best $2.00 investment ever made, we will refund your money for the mere asking. Send today, while you have it in mind.”
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Here is a paragraph not unlike the close of dozens of letters that you read every week:
“Trusting that we may hear from you in the near future and hoping we will have the pleasure of numbering you among our customers, we are,”
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Such a close invites delay in answering. It is an order killer; it smothers interest, it delays action. But here is a close that is likely to bring the order if the desire has been created.
“Simply wrap a $1.00 bill in this letter and send to us at our risk.”
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A writer who does not understand the psychology of suggestion writes this unfortunate closing paragraph:
“Will you not advise us at an early date whether or not you are interested in our proposition? As you have not replied to our previous letters, we begin to fear that you do not intend to avail yourself of this wonderful opportunity, and we would be very glad to have you write us if this is a fact.”
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How foolish to help along one’s indifference by the suggestion that he is not interested. Just as long as you spend postage on a prospect treat him as a probable customer. Assume that he is interested; take it for granted that there is some reason why he has not replied and present new arguments, new persuasion, new inducements for ordering now.
A firm handling a line very similar to that of the firm which sent out the letter quoted above, always maintains the attitude that the prospect is going to order some time and its close fairly bristles with “do it now” hooks:
“Step right over to the telegraph office and send us your order by telegraph at our expense. With this business, every day’s delay means loss of dollars to you. Stop the leak! Save the dollars! Order today!”
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Another unfortunate ending is a groveling servility in which the writer comes on his knees, as it were, begging for the privilege of presenting his proposition again at some future time. Here are the two last paragraphs of a three-paragraph letter sent out by an engraving company—an old established, substantial concern that has no reason to apologize for soliciting business, no reason for meeting other concerns on any basis except that of equality:
“Should you not be in the market at the present time for anything in our line of work, we would esteem it a great favor to us if you would file this letter and let us hear from you when needing anything in the way of engraving. If you will let us know when you are ready for something in this line we will deem it a privilege to send a representative to call on you.
“Trusting we have not made ourselves forward in this matter and hoping that we may hear from you, we are,”
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It is a safe prediction that this letter was written by a new sales manager who will soon be looking for another job. Such an apologetic note, with such a lack of selling talk, such a street beggar attitude could never escape the waste basket. The salesman who starts out by saying, “You wouldn’t be interested in this book, would you?” takes no orders. The letter that comes apologizing and excusing itself before it gets our attention, and, if it gets our attention, then lets down just as we are ready to sign an order, is headed straight for the car wheel plant.
Avoid in the closing paragraph, as far as possible, the participial phrases such as “Thanking you,” “Hoping to be favored,” “Assuring you of our desire,” and so forth. Say instead, “We thank you,” “It is a pleasure to assure you,” or “May I not hear from you by return mail?” Such a paragraph is almost inevitably an anti-climax; it affords too much of a let-down to the proposition.
One of the essentials to the clinching of an order is the enclosures such as order blanks and return envelopes—subjects that are sufficiently important to call for separate chapters.
The essential thing to remember in working up to the climax is to make it a climax; to keep up the reader’s interest, to insert a hook that will get the man’s order before his desire has time to cool off. Your proposition is not a fireless cooker that will keep his interest warm for a long time after the heat of your letter has been removed—and it will be just that much harder to warm him up the second time. Insert the hook that will get the order NOW, for there will never be quite such a favorable time again.
“STYLE” In Letter Writing— And How To Acquire It
SPECIFIC STATEMENTS and CONCRETE FACTS are the substance of a business letter. But whether that letter is read or not, or whether those statements and facts are FORCEFUL and EFFECTIVE, is dependent upon the manner in which they are presented to the reader—upon the “style.” What “style” is, and how it may be acquired and put to practical use in business correspondence, is described in this chapter
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Letter writing is a craft—selecting and arranging words in sentences to convey a thought clearly and concisely. While letters take the place of spoken language, they lack the animation and the personal magnetism of the speaker—a handicap that must be overcome by finding words and arranging them in sentences in such a way that they will attract attention quickly, explain a proposition fully, make a distinct impression upon the reader and move him to reply. Out of the millions of messages that daily choke the mails, only a small per cent rise above the dead level of colorless, anemic correspondence.
The great majority of business letters are not forcible; they are not productive. They have no style. The meat is served without a dressing. The letters bulge with solid facts, stale statements and indigestible arguments—the relishes are lacking. Either the writers do not realize that effectiveness comes only with an attractive style or they do not know how a crisp and invigorating style can be cultivated. Style has nothing to do with the subject matter of a letter. Its only concern is in the language used—in the words and sentences which describe, explain and persuade, and there is no subject so commonplace, no proposition so prosaic that the letter cannot be made readable and interesting when a stylist takes up his pen.
In choosing words the average writer looks at them instead of into them, and just as there are messages between the lines of a letter, just so are there half-revealed, half-suggested thoughts between the letters of words—the suggestiveness to which Hawthorne referred as “the unaccountable spell that lurks in a syllable.” There is character and personality in words, and Shakespeare left a message to twentieth-century correspondents when he advised them to “find the eager words—faint words—tired words—weak words—strong words—sick words—successful words.” The ten-talent business writer is the man who knows these words, recognizes their possibilities and their limitations and chooses them with the skill of an artist in mixing the colors for his canvas.
To be clear, to be forceful, to be attractive—these are the essentials of style. To secure these elements, the writer must make use of carefully selected words and apt figures of speech. Neglect them and a letter is lost in the mass; its identity is lacking, it fails to grip attention or carry home the idea one wishes to convey.
An insipid style, is responsible for much of the ineffectiveness in business letters. Few men will take the time to decipher a proposition that is obscured by ambiguous words and involved phrases. Unless it is obviously to a man’s advantage to read such a letter it is dropped into the waste basket, taking with it the message that might have found an interested prospect if it had been expressed clearly, logically, forcibly.
The first essential for style is clearness—make your meaning plain. Look to the individual words; use them in the simplest way— distinctive words to give exactness of meaning and familiar words to give strength. Words are the private soldiers under the command of the writer and for ease of management he wants small words—a long word is out of place, unwieldy, awkward. The “high-sounding” words that are dragged in by main force for the sake of effect weigh down the letter, make it logy. The reader may be impressed by the language but not by the thought. He reads the words and misses the message.
Avoid long, unfamiliar words. Clothe your thoughts in words that no one can mistake—the kind of language that men use in the office and on the street. Do not make the reader work to see your point; he is busy, he has other things to do—it is your proposition and it is to your interest to put in that extra work, those additional minutes that will make the letter easily understood. It is too much to expect the reader to exert himself to dig out your meaning and then enthuse himself over your proposition.
The men who write pulling letters weigh carefully every sentence, not only pruning away every unessential word but using words of Anglo-Saxon origin wherever possible rather than words of Latin derivation. “Indicate your selection” was written as the catch line for a letter in an important selling campaign, but the head correspondent with unerring decision re-wrote it—“Take your choice”—a simpler, stronger statement. The meaning goes straight to the reader’s mind without an effort on his part. “We are unable to discern” started out the new correspondent in answering a complaint. “We cannot see” was the revision written in by the master correspondent—short, concise, to the point. “With your kind permission I should like to say in reply to your favor”—such expressions are found in letters every day—thousands of them. The reader is tired before the subject matter is reached.
The correspondent who is thinking about the one to whom he is writing starts out briefly and to the point by saying, “This is in reply to your letter,” or, “Thank you for calling our attention to, and so forth.” The reader is impressed that the writer means business. The attitude is not antagonistic; it commands attention.
Letters are unnaturally burdened with long words and stilted phrases, while in conversation one’s thoughts seek expression through lines of least resistance—familiar words and short sentences. But in writing, these same thoughts go stumbling over long words and groping through involved phrases.
Proverbs are sentences that have lived because they express a thought briefly in short, familiar words. Slang becomes popular because of the wealth of meaning expressed in a few words, and many of these sayings gradually work their way into respectability— reluctantly admitted into the sanctuary of
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