Business Correspondence Applications are various ways by which business organisations exchange information with their clients, customers and or suppliers.
Business Correspondence Applications
These methods or ways have short and long term benefits to an organisation. They usually sell an organisation to the clients, open-up new markets, increase sales, improve organisation’s image and help in maintaining mutual relationships.
Customers, clients, suppliers, stockholders, government, media and the general public are crucial to the success of every business organisation.
They constitute formidable groups that cannot be ignored by every organisation that wishes to succeed. Any exchange of information with these groups of people must be treated with all care or utmost importance, especially communication in permanent form.
Major Forms Of Business Correspondence Applications:
These are some of the important exchanges which an organisation makes with people outside its immediate environment.
1. Letters
As business managers spend years planning and working for their organisations, they spend many and more of these years sending and receiving information.
For an organisation to succeed, it must handle correspondence effectively and must ensure that its executive learn the art of writing result- oriented letters.
Business letters are usually very simple, polite and with personal touch. It must clearly communicate the mind of the writer by stating the facts and figures accurately; it must show courtesy, be persuasive, coherent, sincere and constructed using a positive language.
A good business letter must be written on a company’s official paper with the letterhead.
Example
Date
Name of Recipient Title/Department Company
Street Address
City, State, and Zip Code RE
Dear Name:
Subject:
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Sincerely,
(Handwritten Signature) Writer’s Name
Title Enclosure
2. Inquiries and Requests
The purpose of an inquiry or a request is to seek information from another organisation. You therefore ask questions and include necessary information that will help the receiving company to respond as and when due.
You must also understand your needs before you make a request. If you supply incomplete information, the company would not be able to adequately satisfy your needs.
It is also important that you communicate the urgency of the request and state why the request is urgent. There is no room for unnecessary repetitions since the message is very important. Therefore, communicate your message immediately in the first few lines.
Example:
Company Name or Letterhead
Address
City, State Zip
Date Addressee Address
City, State Zip
Dear Mrs……………………… ,
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………..
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Sincerely,
3. Replies
When clients, customers and or consumers send inquiries to your organisation, prompt reply of letters of inquiry is a sign that the business organisation values the clients, customers and or consumers; that consumers’ satisfaction is the reason the organisation is in existence, and that the organisation places importance on mutual relationship.
Replying inquiries also adds to an organisation’s credibility and positive image. Therefore, a reply must supply all the relevant information asked for by the clients and must be carefully drafted.
In most cases, customers or buyers seek information about products or services.
A reply should convince the buyer about the quality of the products or services; prices must be accurately quoted with terms and conditions of purchase and it must express appreciation with an assurance of quality service delivery.
The format is not different from the standard format for writing letters and requests (discussed above).
5. Sales Appeal
Improved technology has brought mass production of products and services and increased competition among industries producing similar and even complementary products.
To capture the existing market before our competitors, we need to boost our sales. We can do this by advertising our products and services, through personal contacts and by sales appeal.
The objective of a sales appeal or letter is to build a network with potential buyers who will be interested in our service or product with the purpose of turning them into buyers or users.
Therefore, a sales appeal or letter must be persuasive; it must catch their attention or curiosity and induce them to buy our product or service. It must also fulfil the following requirements:
- Be long enough to build a case for purchase.
- Identify a particular group of people who will like or need the product or service (the people that the product was originally meant for).
- Contain facts, figures and superior benefits or satisfaction beyond the offerings of the competitors which will induce the readers to
- Should build a conversation with the readers, serving as a possible replacement for salesman.
- Must be powerful enough to urge actions.
- Should carry a postscript leading the consumers to buy immediately.
