Writing Business Letters Which Get the Business
A 1914 pocket booklet from the Office Appliance Company of Chicago, collecting six articles Louis Victor Eytinge wrote for its magazine Office Appliances while serving a life sentence in the Arizona penitentiary at Florence.
What it is
A 1914 pocket booklet from the Office Appliance Company of Chicago, collecting six articles Louis Victor Eytinge wrote for its magazine Office Appliances while serving a life sentence in the Arizona penitentiary at Florence. Selling only by mail, he treats the letter as the salesman. The chapters form a "Get" series: get into the envelope (put yourself in the letter), get under the prospect's hide (start from his need, not "we this and we that"), get a persuasive perspective (lead with a question), get a good grip (hold the argument to its climax), get the dotted line signed (close with one clear action), and get good associates (clean type, neat fill-ins, plain words). Examples include a curio house whose appeal to feeling drew over thirty percent replies against three percent for a price letter, and firms that mailed dollar bills or blank checks with their letters.
Why read it now
Most of it still holds, and much of it is the base of modern sales email. Write to the reader's situation, not your company's history; open with his problem; use a question he has to answer; end with one clear action; keep the form tidy, because a sloppy fill-in reads as contempt. His numbers are anecdotes, not tests. The curio letters that pulled 3 and 30 percent differed in many ways, including a scarcity story about why stock could not be replaced, so read them as illustrations. Later research does support emotional and narrative appeals, but not his clean split between heart and head. Dated: the ornate alliteration he mocks and sometimes commits, cash stuffed in envelopes, which would now read as a bribe or spam, and greetings timed to the hour of mail delivery. One concrete use: take your last sales email, cut every sentence that starts with "we", and rewrite the opening as a question about what the reader stands to lose or gain.
Passages worth keeping
YOUR letters are running too much to brain and not enough to heart.
رسائلك تخاطب العقل بالمعلومات وتنسى أن تخاطب مشاعر القارئ، وهذا ما يضعف أثرها.
Words in the opening do not count for so much as ideas. Words are merely clothes we wrap about ideas to make them humanly appealing.
قوة البداية في الفكرة التي تحملها لا في الألفاظ، فالكلمات مجرد ثوب يقرّب الفكرة من الناس.
A question is often worth a dozen argumentative paragraphs.
السؤال الجيد يجعل القارئ يفكر في مشكلته بنفسه، فيغني عن فقرات كثيرة من الإقناع.
Never open something you can't close.
لا تبدأ نقاشًا في رسالتك لا تستطيع أن تختمه بطلب واضح يدفع القارئ إلى الفعل.
Clean type in a letter is as vital as clean teeth in your salesman.
مظهر الرسالة يحكم به القارئ على الشركة كما يحكم على البائع من هندامه، فالإهمال في الشكل يخسر الصفقة.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
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