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Hello everybody! In the era of digital technologies, the process of communication is simplified, and the business world successfully uses new opportunities by moving to an electronic format. Contracts are concluded by mail, a workflow is coordinated, services and goods are offered … And if letters are written incorrectly, customers and partners may not want to have a common business, so, in order to save your workplace or business, let’s look at the rules of business correspondence.
Top 10 rules
1. Publicity
Even 10 years ago, it was much easier to maintain confidentiality by destroying compromising documents, hiding them in a safe, and in general, with whom to share insignificant information that does not shock the public or does not pass censorship? Now be prepared for the fact that any of your oversights may be available to the public. And more importantly, to have legal force and be used in the company’s internal investigations.
Therefore, no matter what position you hold, manager or cleaner, the text should be restrained and show your competence. And even if they show rudeness towards you, in order to avoid problems in the future, control yourself. Have you heard of trolls? Quite real, sometimes custom people, provoking aggression, which is then used against someone who has shown weakness. So remember, everything that you write can be “leaked” to the public at any time, to other interested people, and so on.
2. Attach files first
Quite often it happens when some document is not attached or while the letter was being printed, they forgot about it. Save your time, as well as the recipients, especially if you want to cooperate with them in the future. In addition, it will exclude unnecessary correspondence in order to find out where the promised document is and whether it was sent at all. The file format should be chosen so that it can be opened from any computer. .doc and .xls are considered public, only write the names without spaces and in Latin. Then the recipient will not have to waste his time looking for ways to finally read it.
3. The subject of the message must be filled in
And use not just a set of words, but directly keywords, by which it can be found at any time, even if a year has passed after receipt. The topic should give an understanding of what kind of message it is, what task it carries in itself and the deadlines. Just avoid monosyllabic constructions, something like «Cooperation», because in this case the message will be lost among a bunch of similar ones.
4. Control your mailing list
If you want several people to receive the message at once, identify the main one who will be responsible for maintaining responses, reports and other things. It must be indicated first in the list in the «To» field, the rest of the recipients in the «Copy» field, but if there are people who should not be seen by the rest of the participants in the correspondence, then write his address in the «Bcc» column.
Sometimes it happens that several performers are attached to perform a task at once, and in order not to get confused or find out who is dealing with what issue, when you receive a message with several recipients, click the «Reply to all» button. In this case, everyone will be notified, and you will make claims and so on only to the one who is the first in the column, which means that he is automatically responsible for the result.
5. One question — one topic
This is not just a rule, but a formula for a successful business letter. That is, if, for example, the performer manages several tasks, in order not to mix everything into one pile, because everything is clear and understandable for a successful person, create a separate branch for each topic. Then you will not lose sight of any details and will be able to close questions as they are resolved.
By the way, various applications have recently become popular, such as WhatsApp, Viber, and so on. So, use them for personal purposes, and work issues should be resolved only in e-mail. Since the history will be preserved, which means that you will not get confused in the questions of who, what, to whom and where they wrote or warned.
6. As they say: “Brevity is the sister of talent”
So save yourself and others time. And in general, in the business world, long messages signal that the sender himself does not know what he wants, that he has a lot of free time, which means that not everything is going smoothly with work, and that he does not respect others, not recognizing their employment and demanding too much attention. In addition, I think it’s no secret to anyone that a very rare person reads a long text to the end, if only because it’s not always easy to hold attention by force in order to finally understand what needs to be done.
7.Literacy
It seems to be clear that literacy is very important, but believe me, for some reason, some people ignore the rules of spelling and punctuation. You should not show that you are too busy to start a sentence with a capital letter, or hypertrophied, therefore, everywhere, even where it is not necessary, that is, in relation to a group of people, use the pronoun «You» with a capital letter. If the grammatical design of letters is at the lowest level, believe me, this will affect your reputation and competence.
8. Control the files you send
Even if you are sure of what they consist of, do not be too lazy to open the attachment once again. Unfortunately, this rule did not arise out of nowhere; situations do occur, the consequences of which are fatal and irreparable. For example, in the hustle and bustle, you can send a file with some internal information to the client, and then he will find out about the profits and income of the company, which, again, will soon be found in the public domain if it is “merged” into the public and the like.
9.Responsiveness
In order to achieve success, as you know, you cannot stop either at what has been achieved or in your development. The world is very fast paced, and in order to survive in it, one must learn to manage the flow of information. What does it mean? And the fact that you need to answer immediately, even if you really don’t feel like it, because the next day your answer will no longer be relevant. And your mail will become the embodiment of chaos.
If questions and tasks accumulate, there is a very low probability that someday you will deal with them. This affects both work, business, and health, because the constant living of tension, when you know that a lot of things are waiting and accumulating, and you don’t have time to cope with everything now, leads to depression, various diseases and emotional burnout.
10.Network
Life is very unpredictable, so stability is not always static, and if today you are an employee of a large company, in a year it may happen that you will already be running your own business, and, unfortunately, vice versa. Why am I doing this? And to the fact that it is important to keep in touch with people, because in the future you may very well cross paths. And if you are required to write something negative, or even thank — always do it, do not disappear just like that. Completion is a must. After all, you must admit, it will be very embarrassing if in a couple of years it happens that you have to cross again.
Recommendations
- No etiquette will help you, if you send a business proposal to the head of a large company from the mailbox, for example, “hotpupsik”, then no matter how tempting the cooperation may be, most likely they will not even answer you, because initially, when they see the name, the message will be sent In garbage.
- When sending letters, be sure to try to fit into the standard work schedule. Believe me, the style of writing and time can tell others a lot about you, which is not always beneficial and necessary. Even if you stay up all night at work, the rest of you do not need to know about it, otherwise they will decide that you have no personal life, you drink and so on.
- Many make banal mistakes that are regarded as an attempt to manipulate, for example, “I hope for a profitable cooperation” and the like. You should not do this, it is better to use templates that do not arouse suspicion and reasons to find fault. So it’s better to say goodbye the old fashioned way, using the phrases “Respectfully, last name, first name”, “All the best!”, “My sincere wishes” and so on. Next, you should indicate the name of the company, your position and necessarily the contacts by which it is possible to contact in case of emergency.
- A little trick that will help shorten a long text: read it and delete phrases, as well as words, the absence of which will not change the meaning and essence of what is written. Remove adjectives, they are not usually used in a formal business style. Also, all sorts of sayings, jokes and postscripts are not needed at all. And by the way, refrain from using abbreviations, especially if you are not 100% sure that the recipient will decipher them. In order not to get confused, how exactly to organize the composition of the letter, try to follow this template:
- Introduction — here you indicate the purpose and reasons for the appeal.
- The main part — in principle, is clear, the very essence of the notification.
- The conclusion is a summing up, that is, requests, instructions, any suggestions.
Conclusion
And that’s all for today, dear readers! By the way you arrange and conduct correspondence, people determine your level, how serious the company is and whether it is worth spending time on you. So be sure to tighten and correct your “tails”.
You may also be interested in reading about the rules of business communication, here is the link. Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog to keep up to date with new and developing articles. I wish you success!