Oct 4: Informative, Positive and Persuasive Messages

Informative & Positive Messages

• Informative message - receiver’s reaction neutral
• Positive message - receiver’s reaction positive
• Neither message immediately asks receiver to do anything

Purposes

Primary

• To give information or good news
• To have receiver view information positively

Secondary

• To build good image of sender
• To build good image of sender’s organization
• To build good relationship between sender and receiver
• To deemphasize any negative elements
• To eliminate future messages on same subject

Common Media: Instant Messages and Text Messages

• Use IMs and TMs to
  - Be less intrusive (than visit or phone call)
  - Ask questions on tasks that fellow colleagues are working on
  - Leave a communication trail

Common Media: Letters/Memos

• Use letters to send messages to people outside your organization
• Use memos to send messages to people within your organization

Common Media: E-mail

• Use e-mail to accomplish routine business activities
• Save time
• Save money
• Allow readers to deal with messages at their convenience
• Communicate accurately
• Provide details for reference
• Create a paper trail

Organizing

• Start with good news or the most important information
• Clarify with details, background
• Present any negative points positively
• Explain any benefits
• Use a goodwill ending
  - Positive
  - Personal
  - Forward-looking

Subject Lines

• Serves three purposes
  1. Aids in filing, retrieving
  2. Tells readers why they should read
  3. Sets up message
• Specific, Concise, Appropriate for Message
  - Differentiate from others on same topic
  - Usually less than 35 characters
  - Must meet situation and purpose

Subject Lines—E-mail

• Specific, concise, and catchy
• Include important information/good news
• Name drop to make connection
• Make e-mail sound easy to deal with
• Create new subject line for reply when
  - Original becomes irrelevant
  - Re: Re: Re: Re: appears

Managing Information

• Give audience information they need
• Consider your purpose
• Develop a system that lets people know what is new if you send out regular messages
• Put the most vital information in e-mails, even if you send an attachment
• Check message for accuracy and completeness
• Remember e-mails are public documents

Audience Benefits

• Use audience benefits when
  - Presenting policies
  - Shaping audience’s attitudes
  - Stressing benefits presents the motives positively
  - Introducing benefits that may not be obvious
• Omit benefits when
  - Presenting factual information ONLY
  - Considering audience’s attitude does not matter
  - Stressing benefits makes audience seem selfish
  - Restating them may insult audience’s intelligence

Ending

• Not all messages end same way
• Goodwill ending–focuses on bond between reader, writer
  - Treats reader as individual
  - Contains you-attitude, positive emphasis
  Omits standard invitation
  - Ex: If you have questions, please do not hesitate to call.

Persuasive and Sales Messages

Purposes

• Primary
  - To have audience act or change beliefs
• Secondary
  - To build good image of the communicator
  - To build good image of communicator’s organization
  - To cement a good relationship between communicator and audience
  - To overcome any objections that might prevent or delay action
  - To reduce or eliminate future messages on subject

Choosing a Persuasive Strategy

1. What do you want people to do?
2. What objections will audience have?
3. How strong a case can you make?
4. What kind of persuasion is best for organization and culture?

Building Credibility

• Be factual—don’t exaggerate
• Be specific—if you say X is better, show in detail how it is better
• Be reliable—if project will take longer or cost more than estimated, tell audience immediately

Three Persuasive Patterns of Organization

• Direct Request
• Problem-solving
• Sales

Why Threats Don’t Persuade

• Don’t produce permanent change
• May not produce desired action
• May make people abandon action
• Produce tension
• People dislike/avoid one who threatens
• Can provoke counter-aggression

Organizing Direct Requests

• Ask immediately for the information or service you want
• Give audience all the information they need to act on your request
• Ask for the action you want

Subject line:

• Request itself
• Topic of request
• Question

Organizing Problem-Solving Messages

• Catch audience’s interest
• Define shared problem
• Explain solution to problem
• Show that advantages outweigh negatives
• Summarize additional benefits
• Ask for action you want

Subject line:

• Omit request or use neutral
• Use common ground or audience benefit

Developing Common Ground

• Suggest you and audience have mutual interest in solving problem
• Analyze audience to understand biases, objections, and needs
• Identify with readers; make them identify with you

Dealing with Objections

• Specify time, money required to act
• Put time, money in context of benefits
• Show that spent money now will save later
• Show benefit about audience’s values
• Show need for sacrifice to achieve larger, goal
• Turn a disadvantage into opportunity

Reasons to Act Promptly

• Show that time limit is real
• Show that acting now will save time or money
• Show the cost of delaying action

Building Emotional Appeal

• Storytelling
• Psychological description
  - Create word picture for readers’ senses
  - Help readers imagine themselves doing, enjoying what you ask

Tone in Persuasive Messages

• Be courteous
• Give solid reasons for requests
• Make requests clear
• Give enough information for audience to act

Varieties of Persuasive Messages

• Performance Appraisals
  - Cite specific observations, not inferences
  -Identify two or three areas for improvement
• Recommendation Letters
  - Be specific
  - Tell how well/ long writer knew applicant
  - Give details about applicant’s work
  - Say whether writer would rehire applicant

Sales and Fund-Raising Purposes

• Primary
  - To motivate reader to act (send donation, order a product)
• Secondary
  - To build good image of writer’s organization
  - To strengthen commitment of readers who act
  - To make readers who do not act more likely to act next time

Organizing Sales/Fund-Raising Messages

Opener

• Makes reader want to read entire message
• Types
  - Questions
  - Narration, stories, anecdotes
  - Startling statements
  - Quotations
• Sets up transition to letter body

Body

• Answers reader’s questions
• Overcomes reader’s objections
• Involves reader emotionally.
• Content usually includes
  - Information any reader can use
  - Stories about history of product/organization
  - Stories about people who use product
  - Readers enjoying benefits offered

Action Close

• Tells readers what to do
• Makes action sound easy
• Offers readers reason to act now
• Ends with positive picture
• May recall central selling point

Using a Postscript

• Reason to act promptly
• Description of premium reader receives
• Reference to another part of package
• Restatement of central selling point

Writing Style

• Make text interesting
• Use psychological description: vivid word pictures
• Make message sound like a letter, not an ad

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Content attributed to Locker, Kitty O. and Donna Kienzler. Business and Administrative Communication, 9/e. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. 2010.