Salesmanship Seminar

Topic: How to write a memo

"The pen is mightier than the sword (except in the subway)."

No matter where you work or for whom, there comes the day in every good salesman's life when he's asked to "put it in writing". And suddenly the well-spring of words which is every salesman's stock-in-trade dries up. Even though it's important to your career, you're tempted to say you "can't do it".

Don't tell me you can't do it. I know you can.

If you can sell, you can write a good memo. And I know you can sell.

To sell well, you've got to be able to communicate. Communicate. That's not so hard, is it? It means relating to people, understanding where they stand, telling them where you're at, and most importantly -- getting your message across.

If you can sell, and I repeat, I know you can, you can communicate verbally and otherwise. Save the otherwise for another time. Concentrate on communicating verbally. If you can do that, that means you can talk. If you can talk, you can write. Right! And you can write a good memo.

Good writing is good talking, no more, no less.

But . . . but . . . but. Put your butts out in the ashtray. If you can sell, you can talk. If you can talk, you can write. You can't convince me otherwise.

O.K., I'll bend a little. You want some rules, some guidelines. Fine. I'll give you some. But do me a favor. Violate them every chance you get. To do the job, do it. It really doesn't make any difference if you follow the rules.

Here are the rules:

1. Know your audience and talk to it in the singular. Take one guy who typifies your audience, think about him, write your memo as if you were talking to him alone. Don't be afraid to say "I". I'm not afraid, why should you be? Effective communication means one-on-one. Make it you talking to him. No more.
2. Write the way you talk. If you talk in words of more than one syllable, go right ahead and write that way. If you don't, why write differently than you talk? Who are you trying to impress? Your mother loves you. I love you. Your buddies adore you. Why burden us with polysyllabic verbage?
3. To be frank (I'd be Prince, but he won't let me), acronyms are a pain in the backside. But there is one that applies. KISS. Keep It Simple Sucker. Say it, say it straight, and get off the soapbox.
4. Don't worry about order and organization. (My apologies to all you anal compulsives.) If it comes out lopsided and crooked, so what. Say it. It's more important to say it than to say it in order. Right? Write!
5. Get it written. Get it done. Timeliness is all. If it moves you, talk about it now. Don't wait. Tomorrow is too late. Write while you're hot, not later. You can always put the commas and periods in later. But darn it, say it now. (There's no rule that says you can't get someone or some software to fix you're spelling and grammar.)
6. Be dramatic. Say it with flare. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So they say. I figure they mean "on average". Paint your verbal picture. Use one word, ten, or ten thousand. Put paint it bright, paint it clear. Make it stop attention. Drama isn't only for playwrights. Memo writing salesmen can use it too.
7. Drink Jack Daniels while writing memos. (Just kidding. But it does help to unwind a bit before picking up the pen or popping on the PC.)

You've got three options on the play.

One, buy a high-school journalism text. Learn all about the 5 w's and h, the 20-40-20 paragraph, and inverted pyramid style. Follow the tenets of journalistic teaching, and you'll write tolerably well.

Option two. Hire a truly professional secretary. She'll know all about spelling, punctuation, when to make a paragraph. Dictate your memos to her. Leave the rest up to her. (It's O.K. to hire a him, but hers are prettier.)

Option three. Get a voice-activated phone to assist you in getting your message out. Since you've decided not to learn to write memos, you're not even going to try, you may as well switch to a voice-activated phone and spare yourself the agony of developing an outsized dialing digit. What an embarrassment that would be. Imagine. You go to Britain on holiday. A tram does you in at Picadilly Circus. They autopsy you. You're wearing clean underwear but the forensic specialist mistakes you for a bookie based on the size of your index finger. Next day your mother opens her copy of the Enquirer, finds your visage staring from page one under the banner "Dandy Bookie Cashes in His Cookies at the Circus -- A Case of Clean Sox and Missing Moxie". That would be a fate worse than death. Wouldn't it?

It probably would have been better to learn to write memos.

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