The goal of this exercise is to help you learn how to apply Chapter 5's guidelines when writing persuasive communications at work.

The Exercise

Review the guidelines in Chapter 5:

Guideline 1: Listen—and respond flexibly to what you hear.
Guideline 2: Focus on your readers' goals and values.
Guideline 3: Address—and learn from—your readers' concerns and counterarguments.
Guideline 4: Reason soundly.
Guideline 5: Organize to create a favorable response.
Guideline 6: Build an effective relationship with your readers.
Guideline 7: Determine whether to appeal to your readers' emotions.
Guideline 8: Adapt your persuasive strategies to your readers' cultural background.
Guideline 9: Employ ethical persuasive techniques.

After you review the guidelines, look at the sample document, which is a letter to a company representative. Go through each of the guidelines, and determine if each of the guidelines is fulfilled. If not, offer suggestions for improvement.

The Letter

Mrs. Sarah Z. Johnson
Coopers Management, Inc.
4560 Turkleston Boulevard
San Diego, CA 12345

Dear Mrs. Johnson:

I was delighted to meet with you last week for lunch. As we discussed, I believe a partnership between Coopers Management, Inc. and MLTM would be beneficial for you, your department, and Coopers Management. By allowing our consultants to work with your employees, I believe, and I have numbers to illustrate this belief, that Coopers Management, Inc. will raise revenues by 30% by the close of this fiscal year.

The primary advantage of working with MLTM and our consultants is that you will be able to enhance the quality of the already world-renowned work of Cooper's Management, Inc. Coopers is already well-respected, providing quality software applications to computer users world wide. And with MLTM and its consultants, Coopers can advance and update its facilities and technology to keep up with the fast-paced computer industry.

We can provide references for our work in the computer industry. In the past year, we helped seven cutting-edge Internet companies gain a competitive edge by upgrading their technology. This helped those companies increase profits by an average of 22%. It's true that during the time we are updating equipment and training employees, Coopers Management, Inc. may see a slight decrease in quarterly profit; however, the increase that will follow the upgrade and training period will far surpass any losses.

I would like to meet with you again to discuss implementing the plan we started to construct during our lunch. MLTM is ready to help Coopers Management, Inc. increase their profits and enhance its international reputation as a leading software development company.

Sincerely,

Mark P. Smith Consultant Manager