Reach Your Reader: How to Make Your Letters a Success
Reach Your Reader: How to Make Your Letters a Success
To make your letters more successful, consider the following tips.
Know Your Reader
The first thing you need to consider when writing letters is the reader—that one person who will be reading what you write. What do you want to tell that reader? How does the reader’s perspective differ from yours? What impression do you want to leave? And what action do you want the reader to take? Let the answers to these questions determine your tone and how you present your information.
What’s Your Purpose?
Letters can be sent to confirm or request information, deal with misunderstandings and complaints, sell new ideas and services to prospects and clients. And your letter’s purpose will dictate the best way to organize the message. This starts before you even set the pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, as the case may be. Before you even start to write you should think about how the readers will react to the contents of the letter. Remember that routine business letters often fall into one of three categories: information, bad news, or persuasion.
If you are sending a factual letter, use an information-driven format. Start with a compelling opening fact or anecdote that informs the reader of your purpose, and then present your main points one paragraph at a time. This format should also be used when you are conveying good news, and remember to jump right in with the good news in the first paragraph. By using this manner, the reader will then play close attention to the details that follow in the letter.
On the other hand, if you're writing to give some unsettling news, a more indirect approach may be more appropriate. The bad news format is gently direct and comes to the point of the letter only after an introductory paragraph that opens the correspondence with some background information. If the reader is given a bad news first, they may skip over the rationale that follows or read it with a biased view.
And of course it should be obvious that the persuasive viewpoint that builds a case for your goods or services is used when you are trying to sell to a prospective client. Use examples, statistics, and testimonials to reinforce your features and benefits. Remember that if you are writing a sales letter, you only have ten seconds to grab the reader's attention. If you don't grab their attention within that timeframe, the reader will not likely finish the letter.
Be Concise and Specific
The length of your letters will vary depending on your purpose and the amount of information you need to convey. But regardless of what you need to include, you should always aim for conciseness. Research has shown that the best sales letters are approximately one to one-and-a-half pages long, which is probably a good general guideline for other types of correspondence as well.
In general, the experts suggest that you keep all your letters short so your message is conveyed as quickly as possible. Be as specific as possible and to tell the readers only what they need to know.
Using Letters Successfully in Your Future
When writing letters for your business correspondence, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the how you convey your message isn’t important. Your letters have the potential to build new relationships, win over new business, and establish rapport with your clients—one reader at a time. Regardless of your letter’s purpose, a great amount of care should be taken to ensure that the contents are the best they can be.
Reach Your Reader How to Make Your Letters a Success - To learn more about this author, visit Melinda Copp's Website.
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Letters—and even e-mails—are person-to-person communications; they are usually written by one person and read by one person. They have the power to win you’re your reader like no other marketing material can. However, there is no such thing as a routine letter. As soon as you start to regard external correspondence as just a task that needs to get done, your letters may lose their personal touch and competitive edge.
To make your letters more successful, consider the following tips.
Know Your Reader
The first thing you need to consider when writing letters is the reader—that one person who will be reading what you write. What do you want to tell that reader? How does the reader’s perspective differ from yours? What impression do you want to leave? And what action do you want the reader to take? Let the answers to these questions determine your tone and how you present your information.
What’s Your Purpose?
Letters can be sent to confirm or request information, deal with misunderstandings and complaints, sell new ideas and services to prospects and clients. And your letter’s purpose will dictate the best way to organize the message. This starts before you even set the pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, as the case may be. Before you even start to write you should think about how the readers will react to the contents of the letter. Remember that routine business letters often fall into one of three categories: information, bad news, or persuasion.
If you are sending a factual letter, use an information-driven format. Start with a compelling opening fact or anecdote that informs the reader of your purpose, and then present your main points one paragraph at a time. This format should also be used when you are conveying good news, and remember to jump right in with the good news in the first paragraph. By using this manner, the reader will then play close attention to the details that follow in the letter.
On the other hand, if you're writing to give some unsettling news, a more indirect approach may be more appropriate. The bad news format is gently direct and comes to the point of the letter only after an introductory paragraph that opens the correspondence with some background information. If the reader is given a bad news first, they may skip over the rationale that follows or read it with a biased view.
And of course it should be obvious that the persuasive viewpoint that builds a case for your goods or services is used when you are trying to sell to a prospective client. Use examples, statistics, and testimonials to reinforce your features and benefits. Remember that if you are writing a sales letter, you only have ten seconds to grab the reader's attention. If you don't grab their attention within that timeframe, the reader will not likely finish the letter.
Be Concise and Specific
The length of your letters will vary depending on your purpose and the amount of information you need to convey. But regardless of what you need to include, you should always aim for conciseness. Research has shown that the best sales letters are approximately one to one-and-a-half pages long, which is probably a good general guideline for other types of correspondence as well.
In general, the experts suggest that you keep all your letters short so your message is conveyed as quickly as possible. Be as specific as possible and to tell the readers only what they need to know.
Using Letters Successfully in Your Future
When writing letters for your business correspondence, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the how you convey your message isn’t important. Your letters have the potential to build new relationships, win over new business, and establish rapport with your clients—one reader at a time. Regardless of your letter’s purpose, a great amount of care should be taken to ensure that the contents are the best they can be.
Reach Your Reader How to Make Your Letters a Success - To learn more about this author, visit Melinda Copp's Website.
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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