I came from an entrepreneurial background with no formal business training, aside from college. My first job out of school was working for a trifecta of ex-Procter & Gamble execs. They had countless hours of training that I skipped right over, so I was forced to catch up quickly.
Since the majority of professionals do not have the benefit of a P&G education, I want to take my best shot at sharing what I have learned.
For the first segment, I will tackle the most common element: Business e-mail. The topics below are the areas that I believe people screw up the most.
Subject Lines
How many e-mails do you receive each day? Better yet, how many e-mails does your boss receive each day? Chances are that they receive over 200 legitimate e-mails. How will your boss be able to reference that data you sent them in the sea of 6,000 monthly e-mails if you don’t label it correctly? They won’t.
The biggest mistake people make is to reply to an old message with a new topic without changing the subject line. If the e-mail has a new subject, it needs a new subject line! ALWAYS use a subject line, make it specific and update it when needed.
Be Brief
Back to the previous point: your colleagues probably get over 200 e-mails per day. Do they really have time to read your 4 page update on the Tulsa Plant’s Inventory issue? Probably not. Use proper grammar and sentence structure, but be brief. Say what needs to be said, nothing more.
Bullets and Lists
How can you be brief, but still get your point across? Utilize bullets and numbered lists as much as possible. Laugh as you will, but they have changed my life. People read them more thoroughly, get through them quicker and retain them better than they do paragraphs.
The Infamous Carbon Copy
This one is easy to understand, but hard for some to follow. Since your boss gets 200+ e-mails a day, does he really need to be copied on everything you send? It is similar to crying wolf. If most of your e-mails are irrelevant to his immediate issues, he will be slower to notice the ones that matter.
The easy solution? Ask your leaders what they prefer to be copied on.
It was Just a Joke!
One study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. Guess what? E-mail has no nonverbal. Written communication is easily misinterpreted because you lose the advantage of tone and non-verbal signals. Be mindful of this when you write and if you are unsure about the appropriateness of a comment, play it safe.
It’s Now in Writing
Why are contracts in writing? Because that makes them permanent. E-mails are the same. They may not hold up the same in court, but they do in business relationships. If you would not sign it on paper, do not commit to it via e-mail.
On the flip side, I learned well that an agreement made via phone should always be followed-up with an e-mail confirmation. Write it to confirm you are both on the same page, but keep it as evidence of your agreement in case someone has a short-term memory.
Proof Read It!!!
That’s it. Proof read every e-mail you send, period. There is no excuse for frequent misspellings and grammar mistakes.
Next Time: Next week is my favorite business writing subject: Meeting Recaps. They are the greatest tool in business for many reasons and we will dive in with a template that will make life easy on you.