(Joe Perri, a new staff of the sales department, is discussing with a more experienced staff Evonka in their office on how to improve letter writing for external purpose.)

场景：公司销售部办公室   人物：Joe Perri、Evonka.

Joe: Excuse me, Evonka.

Evonka:Yes?

Joe: Would you please proof read these two sales letters before we send them out? I found it not

easy to write a sales letter well.

Evonka: OK, let me have a look at them, and I’ll talk to you in a few minutes.

Joe: Alright. Thank you.

Evonka: OK, bye.

........

Evonka: Hi, Joe. Maybe there are some problems with the letters.

Joe: Really?

Evonka: When writing a business letter, the first thing to do is to assess the audience’s reaction in order to choose direct or indirect approach to deal with it. So when your audiences are neutral or positive about your message, you use the direct approach. It means the main idea comes at the top of the document, followed by the evidence.

Joe: Then what is the indirect approach?

Evonka: Indirect approach is used when your audience will be displeased, uninterested, or unwilling about what you say. It encourages readers to read the whole letter, making it more likely to emphasize the positives and rationale to your readers.

Joe: Oh, we have to make such differences.

Evonka: Yes, so in this letter, I think, indirect approach should be used instead of direct approach. This is because we are writing to a client we met at the trade fair and we never had any substantive contact yet.

Joe: Thank you, now I see. So to a great extent, whether we use direct or indirect approach in the letter depends on the reader’s reaction.

Evonka: En, a good sales letter captures the customers’ attention, arouses their interest, creates their desire and encourages their action of purchasing. So in other words, the secret to writing seriously seductive product descriptions is to follow a proven process to engage, persuade, and sell. So I think we can use some buffer before saying that we want to sell something, like referring to our talks at the fair.

Joe: That’s right. Evonka, what are the other problems in my letter?

Evonka: Well, I’m sorry to say this letter is not properly paragraphed since it contains too much information in each paragraph. For the sake of the unity and cohesion, we have to keep one thing to one paragraph only. A simple way to achieve this effect is to write a topic sentence in each paragraph and have a controlling idea of the paragraph.

Joe: I’m sorry about that. 

Evonka: Besides, a good business letter must comply with the 7C-Principle,that is Clarity, Completeness, Conciseness, Courtesy, Correctness, Concreteness and Consideration.

Joe: Yes, I know these principles, but it’s not easy to write accordingly.

Evonka: Sure, not an easy thing to do, but we have to try, you know. In writing a sales letter, You-attitude is very important.

Joe: What is You-attitude?

Evonka: You-attitude could help your letter sound more friendly and considerate. For example, the sentence “We allow 3 percent discount for cash payment” should be changed into “You earn 3 percent discount when you pay cash.” with You-attitude. It makes the readers see the benefit immediately.

Joe: Oh, I got it.

Evonka: In a sales letter, you have to make sure that your product description is concrete and complete. You have to create a comprehensive list of Features and Benefits before you start writing. A feature is a fact about your product, while a benefit is an explanation of what advantages that feature brings to your customers.

Joe: OK, thank you so much, Evonka. There are a lot to learn.

Evonka: Of course. I believe you will learn all these as long as you keep working in our department.