Business Correspondence
Volume 12 of the Alexander Hamilton Institute's Modern Business course, written by Harrison McJohnston, an instructor in business English and salesmanship at the University of Illinois.
What it is
Volume 12 of the Alexander Hamilton Institute's Modern Business course, written by Harrison McJohnston, an instructor in business English and salesmanship at the University of Illinois. The preface sets the premise: every business letter is a selling letter. Across 18 chapters the book builds on one 'keystone' principle, seeing the proposal through the reader's eyes, and tests it on real letters. The opening case is a Riverside inner tube mailed to 100 Ford owners with a request to test it for 30 days; it failed because it asked readers to do the seller's work. Later chapters cover credibility and the 'you' attitude, why letters fail and why they make good, routine, order, adjustment, credit and collection letters, training correspondents, a self-question chart for planning a letter, following leads, mail systems, mechanical form, grammar, and business reports.
Why read it now
The reader's point of view is the book's core, and it holds; customer interviews and message testing exist to do the same job. The self-question chart asks the writer to picture one real person who typifies the class, list that person's resistances and the impressions the letter must leave, a working persona brief decades before the word entered marketing. The Riverside case is a clean lesson in friction: the offer cost readers effort and gave them nothing, and only one man, who happened to need a tube, paid. The adjustment chapter's warning that polite complainers are the ones who leave quietly matches complaint studies since the 1970s, such as TARP's work for the US government, which found most unhappy customers never complain to the firm. What has dated: the prose is slow, every example travels by post, and the book tolerates exaggeration where it helps show true value, a door that modern rules on misleading claims keep shut. Use: before writing any campaign message, answer the chart's nine pre-writing questions for one named customer, and send nothing until each resistance on the list has an answer in the copy.
Passages worth keeping
all letters are selling letters in so far as they attempt to make the reader think and act as the writer desires.
كل رسالة تحاول أن تجعل القارئ يفكر أو يتصرف كما يريد الكاتب هي رسالة بيع، حتى لو لم تعرض سلعة.
All buyers dislike to be driven.
المشتري ينفر من الضغط، والعبارة التي تشعره بأنه مدفوع إلى فعل شيء تضعف الرسالة مهما بدت صادقة.
(1) Tell the truth. (2) Prove, or omit, all statements that might not be believed.
قاعدة المصداقية عند أحد المديرين: قل الحقيقة، وكل ادعاء قد لا يصدقه القارئ إما أن تثبته أو تحذفه.
The expert adjustment correspondent fears most the complaint letter that shows courteous restraint
الشكوى الغاضبة أقل خطرًا من الشكوى المهذبة، لأن العميل الهادئ غير الراضي هو الذي يتوقف عن الشراء دون أن يخبرك.
Asking for an order too soon is often as ineffective as not asking for it at all.
طلب الشراء قبل أن يبدي العميل اهتمامه يضيّع الصفقة كما يضيّعها عدم الطلب، فالأفضل أولًا أن تحصل منه على إشارة اهتمام.
What it teaches best
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