You also need the cover letter to demonstrate your personal qualifications, especially the ability to communicate well. If you see that accomplishing your big goal, getting a shot at the job, depends on this set of more specific goals, it’s obvious why a one-line perfunctory message won’t do well against the competition.
A cover letter for a formal business proposal has its own big goal: help convince an individual or an institution to finance your new product, for example. To do this, the cover letter’s role is to connect with the prospective buyer, entice him to actually read at least part of the document, predispose him to like what he sees, present your company as better than the competition, and show off good communication skills.
How about the proposal itself? If you break down this goal into a more specific subset, you realize ideally the proposal must demonstrate:
❯❯ The financial viability of what you plan to produce
❯❯ A minimal investment risk and high profit potential
❯❯ Your own excellent qualifications and track record
❯❯ Outstanding backup by an experienced team
❯❯ Special expertise in the field
❯❯ In-depth knowledge of the marketplace, competition, business environment, and so on
To reap the benefit of goal definition, you must take time to look past the surface. Write every message with a clear set of goals. If you don’t know your goals, don’t write at all.
Try This: Invariably one of your goals is to present yourself in writing as professional, competent, knowledgeable, creative, empathetic, and so on, but don’t let me tell you who you are or want to be! Create a list of the personal and professional qualities you want other people to perceive in you. Then remember, every time you write, be that person. Ask yourself how that individual handles the tough stuff. Your answers may amaze you. This technique isn’t mystical, just a way of accessing your own knowledge base and intuition. You may be able to channel this winning persona into your in-person experiences, too.
You’ve no doubt noticed that people are genuinely different in countless ways: what they value, their motivations, how they like to spend their time, their attitude toward work and success, how they communicate and make decisions, and much more. One ramification of these variables is that they read and react to your messages in different and sometimes unexpected ways.
When you meet someone in person and want to persuade her to your viewpoint, you automatically adapt to her reactions as you go along. You respond to a host of clues. Beyond interruptions, comments, and questions, you also perceive facial expression, body language, tone of voice, nervous mannerisms, and many other indicators.
Unless you’re sending a truly trivial message, begin by creating a profile of the person you’re writing to. There’s a really big payoff in doing this for people who are important to you, such as your boss. You emerge with illuminating guidelines on how to improve all your interactions with him or her, as well as knowing what to say and how to say it. This helps you with your face-to-face interaction as well as writing.
When the situation involves someone you don’t deal with often, or don’t know at all, the depth of the profile you create depends on how important the results are to you. If you’re responding to a customer query, you don’t need to know his decision-making style. If you’re writing to the department head with a request, you might want to find out how much information he prefers to have, what his priorities are, and more.
Before you try profile building, it might seem daunting to characterize someone when so much that drives each person is invisible. Trust me, you know much more about your audience than you think. In the case of a person already familiar to you, your observations, experience, and intuition go a long way. It’s a matter of drawing on these resources in a systematic manner, especially your memory of how she reacted to previous interactions.
Try This: Here’s the system I recommend. For now, suppose the person is someone you know. Begin with the usual suspects: demographics. Write down what you already know about the person, or take your best guess:
❯❯ How old?
❯❯ Male or female?
❯❯ Occupation?
❯❯ Married, single, or some other arrangement?
❯❯ Member of an ethnic or religious group?
❯❯ Educated to what degree?
❯❯ Social and economic position?
After demographics, consider psychographics, the kind of factors marketing specialists spend a lot of time studying. Marketers are interested in creating customer profiles to understand and manipulate consumer buying. For your purposes, some psychographic factors that can matter are:
❯❯ Lifestyle
❯❯ Values and beliefs
❯❯ Opinions and attitudes
❯❯ Interests
❯❯ Leisure and volunteer activities
You also need to consider factors that reflect someone’s positioning, personality, and, in truth, entire life history and outlook on the world. Some factors that may directly affect how a person perceives your message include the following:
❯❯ Professional background and experience
❯❯ Position in the organization: What level? Moving up or down? Respected? How ambitious? Happy in the job and with the organization?
❯❯ Degree of authority
❯❯ Leadership style: Team-based? Dictatorial? Collaborative? Indiscernible?
❯❯ Preferred communication style: In-person? Brief or detailed written messages? Telephone? Texting? PowerPoint? Facebook or other social media?
❯❯ Approach to decision-making: Collaborative or top-down? Spontaneous or deliberative? Risk-taker or play-it-safer?
❯❯ Information preferences: Broad vision? In depth? Statistics and numbers? Charts and graphs?
❯❯ Work priorities and pressures
❯❯ Sensitivities and hot buttons: What makes her angry? Happy?
❯❯ Interaction style and preferences: A people person or a numbers, systems, or technology person? Good team member or not?
❯❯ Type of thinking: Logical or intuitive? Statistics-based or ideas-based? Big picture or micro-oriented? Looking for long-range or immediate results?
❯❯ Weaknesses (perceived by the person or not): Lack of tech savvy? Poor people skills? Lack of education and training? No experience?
❯❯ Type of people the person likes, feels comfortable with, and respects, and the reverse: Who likes and gets along with him?
❯❯ Sense of humor, personal passions, hobbies