New rules of business correspondence

Business correspondence is an integral part of the modern business process. To make it bring positive results, rather than irritation, aggression and anger, the authors of the book "New Rules for Business Correspondence" suggest taking into account some points. After all, for a business letter there is no ready-made template where it is enough to insert the recipient's name and email address. Such letters sound dry and phony.

“The language of business communication is no longer the style of the Politburo and not a dictionary of business correspondence with worn-out stamps. This is the language in which you are comfortable working. " M. Ilyakhov, L. Sarycheva

An effective business letter is always individual, addressed to a specific person, and you need to know some subtleties to write it. The first and most important thing to remember is respect and care for your interlocutor. Here we are talking, first of all, about your actions, and not about words.

Respect starts with being accurate. Silly typos, misplaced punctuation marks, ignoring capital letters, and spelling mistakes are all perceived as disrespectful. It is also unacceptable to make mistakes in the name of the recipient of the letter. Address the person exactly as he introduced himself: Margaret means Margaret, not Rita. Take the time to check your email before sending it. If you fail to do this, you will gain a couple of seconds of precious time, but in the end you can lose a lot more.

Another form of disrespect is familiarity. Do not go to "you" without mutual consent, it is annoying. In general, it is better to switch to “you” not in a business letter, but at a personal meeting, when you see a person and understand the situation. Don't use pet names to sweeten bad news or criticism. Most likely, this will be the reason for the irritation of your interlocutor.

Taking care of the recipient means respecting their time and attention. That is, your task is to make the letter read easily and quickly. How to do it? To begin with, clearly and concisely formulate the subject of the letter. It should be such that, looking at it, the reader immediately understands what this letter is about and what is required of him.

Also an important point - the letter should be focused on one problem. Switching between tasks is tedious. Having looked at a chaotic letter, overloaded with a variety of information, the recipient will postpone it for the future for a more detailed analysis, after which he may simply forget about it. If you still need to include several questions in the letter at once, clearly structure it. Each topic should correspond to a separate paragraph, and for greater clarity, paragraphs can be numbered or accompanied by headings.

Apps should be kept in mind as well. If you attach files to a letter, briefly state its content in the body of the letter. Sometimes it makes sense to do a part of his work for the recipient: if he has to solve a question, for example, about a meeting, you can offer him options for an answer. The addressee will take this as a manifestation of your concern, and he will be pleased to work with you.

These are just a few of the rules you need to know to write a good business letter. This book will be useful to everyone who conducts any work correspondence. It also discusses in detail what and how not to write, how to structure a letter, how to respond to complaints and many other situations, which are accompanied by vivid examples. We hope that this article was useful to you and will help you prove your competence in front of colleagues, clients and partners.