You will hear a speaker giving a group of business students about how to wri

Man: Um, can I have your attention, please? Thanks. A lot of people ask me ’ how to write an effective introductory letter?’ Well, there are certain proven rules and techniques that improve the chances of: a)your letter getting past(or being forwarded by)the secretary to your intended contact, and b)your intended contact being interested in seeing you.
Think how you treat unsolicited letters that you receive. Most of these letters go in the bin, and many letters won’t even be opened. A few seconds is all anyone takes to decide whether to read a letter or discard it. A secretary will open your letter, and he or she too will decide in just a few seconds whether to read on, then whether to pass it to your intended contact, another person, or to file it or bin it.
Increasingly these days it’s good to aim first for a telephone appointment — a qualifying discussion when you can ask helpful questions and seek to understand the client’s situation — before expecting to agree a face-to-face meeting. You can do a lot on the phone. Having a telephone appointment in your mind as an initial aim often makes it easier to get the ball rolling. It also shows that you have a professional appreciation of the value of people’s time.
Remember that your letter will be competing with perhaps ten, twenty, or even fifty sales letters received every day, sent by sales people also hoping to gain your target’s attention. To get through, your sales letter needs to be good, different, professional and relevant.
Use the five-second rule when designing direct sales letter’s opening statements and headlines. You must grab attention in five seconds: that’s about ten words comfortably: fifteen to twenty words at most. This implies a headline, which is why headlines are often used. If you prefer not to use a headline, fine, but still you need to grab attention in your opening paragraph in five seconds.
The time available for grabbing attention and conveying meaning is shrinking all the time. People used to talk in terms of four to eight seconds to grab attention. Now it’s best to work on less than five seconds. This is because progressively we can all absorb information and ideas far more quickly than we used to. Our environments ’ train’ our brains to do this. Think about TV adverts, video games, chat-rooms, email and text messages, fast-moving media and entertainment generally — it’s all getting quicker —we get bored sooner, and we need data quicker. Your contacts are just the same. Quick-thinking senior decisionmakers especially: they need your letters to help them absorb and understand data as quickly as possible. If it takes too long they won’t bother. Efficient and effective letters not only get read and get your points across, they also say something about you — that you are efficient and effective too.
So you need to be very efficient and thoughtful in your use of language and words. Every word must be working for you: if it’s not, remove it or find another.
Think about the language that your intended contact uses — for example, what newspaper they are likely to read — this is your vocabulary guide.
Think about the business vocabulary, too: senior decision-makers and company directors are concerned mainly with making money and saving money. Read the financial pages of the broadsheets — look at the words that people use — and start using these words too.
Obviously make sure you use the person’s correct title(Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr, etc.)and properly spelled surname in the address(initials are considered by some to be more professional and polite than using first names).
Keep the sentences short. Introductory letters must be able to be read and understood in under 30 seconds — less than 20 seconds even better — so your letter will never require more than one side of paper. The less words the better. Generally three short paragraphs of ’body-copy’ suffice. It’s doubtful you’d achieve what you need in just two: four or five are Okay if they’re very brief: any more is way too much. Use bullet points if you have a number of short points to make.