Hack your business letters with Lifehack’s tips to get results
No matter what your job, you still have to write business-related letters, whether to clients, suppliers, or people within your own company. But writing an effective business letter that gets the message across professionally can be challenging for many reasons, including the following:
- You’re a programmer/sales person/VP Business Development, not a writer.
- You have to write business letters in foreign languages.
- You’re struggling to get results from your business letters.
Lifehack just wrote a post with great tips on writing a business letter that gets results. The author, Dustin M. Wax, relates how in a previous position many of the decisions he made were based on the quality of the letter that he received:
“I can’t tell you how many truly awful letters I’ve had to read in my life. As a former administrative assistant, I was responsible for all the unsolicited submissions to a major New York museum. Artists and collectors all over the country (and abroad) wrote to have their work considered for display or acquisition, and to be honest the decision frequently rested more on the quality of their cover letter than on their work - which, romantic dreams aside, rarely if ever sells itself (my bold).”
So how do you write a business letter that gets results?
Dustin first takes a look at the structure of a good business letter. A formal letter needs to contain certain, basic elements, that when used, make the letter look serious. These elements are:
- Return address and date
- Mailing address of recipient
- Salutation
- Body
- Valediction
- Signature and printed name
- Enclosures – this refers to extra included material like a business card or an invoice
Dustin goes into depth for each of the above points, so be sure to read the post.
The next thing you need to keep in mind is content. No matter how pretty your letter is, if the content isn’t engaging, you won’t achieve your goals since nobody’s going to read it. Dustin says to follow the tried-and-true copywriting formula of AIDA: get their attention, get them interested, arouse their desire, and then tell them what action to take. Dustin gives detailed tips and a case study on how to achieve these goals in the post.
These points are relevant to all forms of business communication, and communication in general. Presentation, i.e. structure, is key to getting someone to take you seriously. Once you’ve got them to even look at you, you need to persuade them to take action by following the steps of AIDA.
Another good resource for tips on writing effective business letters is Englishclub.com. The site has a useful tutorial on writing business letters, which takes you step-by-step through vocabulary tips, letter formats, planning, writing and proofreading. The common phrases throughout this lesson can help you articulate your message with proper English and the appropriate business tone.
Happy business writing!