Business Writing Training– The most important key of all
March 26th, 2010 | by admin |Most business writing training courses focus on clear communication.
To do that they will tell you correctly, you must first consider and set goals.
So the training starts with goal setting.
Training recommends that you:
Define the essence of what you are communicating
Identify the mindset of the audience, to know how to address them
Define goals for the objective of the communication.
Once that is done, then writing training then sets about the process of explaining effective communication by presentation in a logical, and clear manner.
Presentation has a number of aspects which form a core of business writing training.
The first key is structure. As an old communications lecturer of mine once said, in a rather prosaic fashion:
Tell them what you are going to tell them
Tell them
Then tell them what you have told them
That in essence Identifyies the need for setting a framework for the communication .
First a road map, and at the end a conclusion
As part of the structural issues , it is also clearly important to identify clear actions expected from the audience or participants, and a time and monitoring framework
Beyond the structural level a writing course then focuses on some of the grammatical, spelling and so on.
But In a way all of this misses the point.
The fundamental objective of almost every and any communication is PERSUASION.
Information is impotent unless it demands action, and that action is the essence of the goal in providing the information.
The persuasion issue is the most fundamental skill of all.
First you have to persuade them to read the document at all.
Then you have to persuade them to read the critical parts
Finally you have to persuade them to take the actions needed
This starts with the TITLE itself. Which is rarely addressed properly in any training
“Take a document entitled: “marketing report and strategy 2014”
Given a choice would you rather read that, or this one:
“Three simple changes to marketing – that will add 23% to the bottom line in 2014”
The fact is the title in presents the conclusion, but in doing so makes the reader wonder what the changes are!!, and that makes him to read on.
It is also important to make the reader carryon reading, and given a choice of writing styles, the use of English in a conversational style. That style makes the reader think that he and the writer are the only people in the conversation. In addition you need to exercise the readers imagination – and make an emotional appeal.
Words like “shocking” will arouse more interaction than the word “disappointing”
So which would make you read – a dull and typical third person.
“The statistics clearly contain anomalies. The increased consumer satisfaction survey seems at odds with the declining sales - and all participants in the process need to consider reasons for this, in addition to those below”
Or a conversation held with the reader such as:
“Can you think of an explanation for this? I am struggling to work out why the customers seem happier but still are not buying more from us. So please do give it some thought and tell me if you have other ideas not mentioned below, which were all the ideas I could think of.”
Persuasion is THE key skill –which requires the writer to explain to the reader why it is in the readers interests to do what is needed.
So all business writing training must focus on persuasion as well as effective communication