How to Begin a Business Letter

From its saluation to its signature a business letter must hold the interest of the reader or fail in its purpose. The most important sentence in it is obviously the FIRST one, for upon it depends whether the reader will dip further into the letter or discard it into the waste basket. IN THAT FIRST SENTENCE THE WRITER HAS HIS CHANCE. If he is really capable, he will not only attract the reader's interest in that first sentence, but put him into a receptive mood for the message that follows. Here are some sample ways of "opening" a business letter

No matter how large your tomorrow morning's mail, it is probable that you will glance through the first paragraph of every letter you open. If it catches your attention by reference to something in which you are interested, or by a clever allusion or a striking head line or some original style, it is probable you will read at least the next paragraph or two. But if these paragraphs do not keep up your interest the letter will be passed by unfinished. If you fail to give the letter a full reading the writer has only himself to blame. He has not taken advantage of his opportunity to carry your interest along and develop it until he has driven his message home, point by point.

In opening the letter the importance of the salutation must not be ignored. If a form letter from some one who does not know Mr. Brown, personally, starts out "Dear Mr. Brown," he is annoyed. A man with self-respect resents familiarity from a total stranger--someone who has no interest in him except as a possible customer for his commodity.

If a clerk should address a customer in such a familiar manner it would be looked upon as an insult. Yet it is no uncommon thing to receive letters from strangers that start out with one of these salutations:

"Dear Benson:" "My dear Mr. Benson:" "Respected Friend:" "Dear Brother:"

While it is desirable to get close to the reader; and you want to talk to him in a very frank manner and find a point of personal contact, this assumption of friendship with a total stranger disgusts a man before he begins your letter. You start out with a handicap that is hard to overcome, and an examination of a large number of letters using such salutations are enough to create suspicion for all; too often they introduce some questionable investment proposition or scheme that would never appeal to the hard-headed, conservative business man.

"Dear Sir" or "Gentlemen" is the accepted salutation, at least until long correspondence and cordial relations justify a more intimate greeting. The ideal opening, of course, strikes a happy medium between too great formality on the one hand and a cringing servility or undue familiarity on the other hand.

No one will dispute the statement that the reason so many selling campaigns fail is not because of a lack of merit in the propositions themselves but because they are not effectively presented.

For most business men read their letters in a receptive state of mind. The letterhead may show that the message concerns a duplicating machine and the one to whom it is addressed may feel confident in his own mind that he does not want a duplicating machine. At the same time he is willing to read the letter, for it may give him some new idea, some practical suggestion as to how such a device would be a good investment and make money for him. He is anxious to learn how the machine may be related to his particular problems. But it is not likely that he has time or sufficient interest to wade through a long letter starting out:

"We take pleasure in sending you under separate cover catalogue of our latest models of Print-Quicks, and we are sure it will prove of interest to you."

The man who has been sufficiently interested in an advertisement to send for a catalogue finds his interest cooling rapidly when he picks up a letter that starts out like this:

"We have your valued inquiry of recent date, and we take pleasure in acknowledging," and so forth.

Suppose the letter replying to his inquiry starts out in this style:

"The picture on page 5 of our catalogue is a pretty fair one, but I wish you could see the desk itself."

The reader's attention is immediately gripped and he reaches for the catalogue to look at the picture on page five.

To get attention and arouse interest, avoid long-spun introductions and hackneyed expressions. Rambling sentences and loose paragraphs have proved the graveyard for many excellent propositions. Time-worn expressions and weather-beaten phrases are poor conductors, there, is too much resistance-loss in the current of the reader's interest.

The best way to secure attention naturally depends upon the nature of the proposition and the class of men to whom the letter is written.

One of the most familiar methods is that known to correspondents as the "mental shock." The idea is to put at the top of the letter a "Stop! Look! Listen!" sign. Examples of this style are plentiful:

THIS MEANS MONEY TO YOU--BIG MONEY LET ME PAY YOUR NEXT MONTH'S RENT READ IT--ON OUR WORD IT'S WORTH READING STOP SHOVELING YOUR MONEY INTO THE FURNACE NOW LISTEN! I WANT A PERSONAL WORD WITH YOU CUT YOUR LIGHT BILL IN HALF

Such introductions have undoubtedly proved exceedingly effective at times, but like many other good things, the idea has been overworked. The catch-line of itself sells no goods and to be effective it must be followed by trip-hammer arguments. Interest created in this way is hard to keep up.

The correspondent may use a catch-line, just as the barker at a side show uses a megaphone--the noise attracts a crowd but it does not sell the tickets. It is the "spiel" the barker gives that packs the tent. And so the average man is not influenced so much by a bold catch-line in his letters as by the paragraphs that follow. Some correspondents even run a catch-line in red ink at the top of the page, but these yellow journal "scare-heads" fall short with the average business proposition.

Then attention may be secured, not by a startling sentence but by the graphic way in which a proposition is stated. Here is an opening that starts out with a clear-cut swing:

"If we were to offer you a hundred-dollar bill as a gift we take it for granted that you would be interested. If, then, our goods will mean to you many times that sum every year isn't the proposition still more interesting? Do you not want us to demonstrate what we say? Are you not willing to invest a little of your time watching this demonstration?"

This reference to a hundred-dollar bill creates a concrete image in the mind of the reader. The letters that first used this attention-getter proved so effective that the idea has been worked over in many forms. Here is the effective way one correspondent starts out:

"If this letter were printed on ten-dollar bills it could scarcely be more valuable to you than the offer it now contains. You want money; we want your business. Let's go into partnership."