Effective Business Letters: Their Requirements and Preparation
A textbook by Edward Hall Gardner, Professor of Business Administration at the University of Wisconsin, published by the Ronald Press after five years of commerce classes.
What it is
A textbook by Edward Hall Gardner, Professor of Business Administration at the University of Wisconsin, published by the Ronald Press after five years of commerce classes. It treats every letter as a sales document and gives each common type a structure: inquiries, orders, acknowledgments, adjustments, credit, collections, sales letters and applications. Every letter needs clearness, conciseness, completeness, correctness and courtesy, because it is skimmed among dozens of others. Credit rests on character, capital and capacity. Collections must get the money and keep the customer, through promptness, flexibility and system. A sales letter runs from point of contact to conviction, persuasion and a clincher; follow-ups vary the angle but keep one look. He warns against price cuts, advises testing two or three letters on part of a list, and describes complete, paragraph and guide form letters. He credits correspondence from Butler Brothers, Marshall Field and Montgomery Ward.
Why read it now
Much of this is still the working manual behind good email and customer service. His reader, skimming one letter among twenty to a hundred, matches eye-tracking studies by the Nielsen Norman Group, which find that people scan rather than read online. His test, sending two or three versions to part of the list and rolling out the one whose sales beat its cost, is an A/B test in all but name. His warning on price cuts fits reference-price research: frequent discounts teach buyers to wait and to doubt the full price. His paragraph form, stock paragraphs coded like 5A, 16H, 23C, is the ancestor of saved replies. What has dated: carbon copies, third-class mail, and the claim that women act more on instinct, which he half mocks and half repeats. His four-part letter is classical argument, useful but not proven to be the only order that works. Use: build a library of labelled WhatsApp and email paragraphs for each customer situation, and test two versions of your next follow-up on a slice of the list before sending to everyone.
Passages worth keeping
The fundamental qualities which the reader demands in every letter are clearness, conciseness, completeness, correctness, and courtesy.
يحدد غاردنر خمس صفات يطلبها القارئ في كل رسالة: الوضوح والإيجاز والاكتمال والصحة واللطف، وهي أساس ما يُدرَّس اليوم في الكتابة المهنية.
The usual business letter is read rapidly or only glanced through. The eye runs down the page, catching at the outstanding words and phrases, looking for a key to the meaning of the whole.
رسالة العمل لا تُقرأ بتمعن بل تُتصفح بسرعة، والعين تلتقط الكلمات البارزة لتفهم المقصود، فيجب أن يظهر المعنى من النظرة الأولى.
A merchant in making collections has two objects: to get the money, and to keep the customer.
للتحصيل هدفان متلازمان: أن تسترد المال وأن تحتفظ بالعميل، لأن أرباح تعاملاته القادمة قد تفوق المبلغ المستحق الآن.
It is bad policy to cut prices; the customer will hold out longer in hope of further reductions, besides suspecting the reliability of the seller and the real merit of his goods.
خفض السعر يضر البائع، فالعميل ينتظر تخفيضًا أكبر، ويبدأ يشك في موثوقية البائع وفي جودة السلعة نفسها.
Two or three letters covering a proposition can be prepared with the best skill their writers possess, and sent to a portion of the list of people who are finally to be addressed.
قبل الإرسال الواسع، جرّب رسالتين أو ثلاثًا على جزء من القائمة، ثم اعتمد الرسالة التي حققت أفضل نتيجة مقارنة بكلفتها.
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