In fact, have you ever thought that this practice will seriously dampen your enthusiasm? Imagine sitting in front of a computer for 12 hours a day, searching for guest information from Google and various yellow pages, sending out letters one after another, going home tired at night, and waiting for you to go to work hopefully the next day. What do you feel?
I used to do business. After graduating from college, I started as a business assistant and merchandiser, then worked as a sales assistant, sales manager, PA to director, and now I have worked as a buyer. I changed jobs in the middle and experienced various problems experienced by most of my friends. At that time, I also had such a period of time, sending sales letters day and night, looking for new customers, and making endless quotations, but with little effect. Later, after meeting many different guests, I found that the original letter was very problematic in private. Many foreigners also do sales and write letters. Why is the turnover rate much higher than ours? Even if the transaction rate is not mentioned, the response rate is much higher than ours?
Many friends who just graduated are majoring in international trade, and generally have taken the course of foreign trade correspondence. The teacher has repeatedly taught you how to write business letters and how to answer questions. In fact, almost all these textbooks are compiled by scholars, either outdated or basically divorced from reality. Many teachers have stayed in school all their lives and have never even done foreign trade. How can you expect to learn the essence of writing business letters from them? A really good email must imitate the writing style of foreigners, especially English-speaking guests! Even if your email is well written, the grammar is accurate, and there are no mistakes in the whole article, you can get full marks in college, but the guests still feel awkward after receiving it. I think that when you write an email to a guest, you must forget the writing style and thinking mode of China people, and think and write an email according to the habits of Europeans and Americans, so that the guest will treat you as the same kind.
On that day, you can write an email at will. When most people can't see that this email is from China, you start your career!
Let me first list some mistakes that most friends often make when writing emails. You can look at them and compare them yourself. How many will you have? Next, we will discuss how to write letters. Ha ha.
1) The message is too long.
Guests' time is precious, and they receive hundreds of emails every day. Think about it. An unknown person sent you a long and smelly email, with poor English expression and several M attachments. Will you read it carefully? Moreover, many foreigners have a strong sense of time. Every day, they have some fixed time to deal with emails. Many lengthy emails, as long as they are not sent by his acquaintances, will generally be deleted directly, or your address will be set as spam.
I have asked many western European guests that it usually takes them 2-3 seconds to process each email, that is, to take a general look. Important emails are generally read carefully and answered immediately, which is not very important. The specific time to be processed will be marked in outlook, and then pulled from the inbox to the corresponding subdirectory. In other words, as long as the guest's email address is correct and the person you are looking for is right, your letter can only stay in front of him for 2-3 seconds, which is the moment that determines your fate. In this case, do you dare to write the email very long?
2) There is no clear theme.
An ambiguous topic will make guests completely uninterested in opening strangers' emails. This requires experience, the content should be concise, and the purpose is achieved by directly attracting guests to click on the email through the theme. As for whether he reacts after reading it, it depends on the actual situation and the skill of your content. Some people will set the subject of the e-mail as: "We are a lamp manufacturer", or "Need cooperation", or "Guangdong * * * Trading Co., Ltd.", or "Lamp Price List-Guangdong * * * Trading Co., Ltd.", and so on. They knew it was a sales letter at a glance. You may be interested in reading a sales letter once a week, but if you receive n sales letters a day, you are likely to get bored, so it is polite to delete them directly. So how to write the theme well, let the guests know that this is a sales letter, or can't help but open it? It needs to be judged according to the situation at the moment.
For example, suppose I am DEF Limited, a company that produces solar lamps. At present, the company's biggest customer is The Home Depot in America. Although it may be done through traders, it can be used as a bargaining chip to develop new customers! If I want to write an open letter to ABC inc in the United States (I made up this name), I know some information about this company from google. I know that they are importers in the United States. They make a series of solar lamps and hope to try to develop this customer. I usually write the theme like this, "Re:ABC Inc/ The Home Depot Supplier-Solar Lights /def Co., Ltd."
Among them, ABC inc stands for the company name of the guest. You should first add the name of his company to the subject you wrote for him to show your respect for their company. The Home Depot supplier-solar lamp clearly shows that you are the solar lamp supplier of The Home Depot, the second largest retailer in North America, which not only shows your strength, but also interests him. Finally, DEF Limited represents its own company. In this way, suppose you find the right person, this is the buyer of solar lamps of ABC company, or one of his supervisors, and suddenly one day you receive an email with the subject like this. Wow, the supplier of The Home Depot has been found, which is great. It depends on whether there are opportunities for cooperation and whether it is better than the original supplier. The probability that he will open the mail will be very, very high! In addition, this theme has another advantage, that is, even if the guest doesn't reply to your email for the time being, he just puts it in his inbox, but one day he suddenly asks you to quote it, so it's easy to find this email! Just enter the keywords into The Home Depot, and you will find them at once.
3) lengthy company or factory introduction.
I am a buyer now, and I will also receive sales letters from factories and trading companies. The trading company is better. Many factory salesmen really can't write letters well, which can be said to be terrible, wasting both guests' time and their own. I often receive similar emails: "We are a lighting factory, located in the southeast of the beautiful Yangtze River Delta, with convenient transportation and beautiful scenery, only 2 hours' drive from Shanghai and Hangzhou. Our company was established in 2002, and has rich experience in the production and development of solar lamps, which is world-renowned. Our factory has obtained ISO900 1:2000: 2000 quality system, and strictly abides by 5S management. We sincerely welcome you to visit our factory. I hope to establish a long-term business relationship with you, and we will win customers with sincerity and service ... "In this case, guests will be impatient, even if you are a good company and a good factory, anyone who receives such an email for the first time will be bored."
Some friends will ask, is that not writing at all? My answer is, not necessarily, it depends on the specific situation. If your company has outstanding advantages, you can write it, but it is best to just brush it off. It can be written as follows: We supply solar lamps to The Home Depot with high quality and competitive price. Hope to cooperate with you!
To put it simply, get to the point in one or two sentences, arouse the foreigner's appetite and let him ask you various questions in turn, and your purpose will be achieved. After doing business for a long time, you will find that there are few long-winded guests in every email. Even if there is, it is a rare exception, and some details still need to be confirmed.
4) Love to show off your English level.
Once upon a time, there was an assistant who had just graduated from CET-8 and wanted her to write emails to foreigners. She always likes to write vividly, and all kinds of grammatical clauses emerge one after another. She also likes to use obscure words, which make people understand after a long time. It will be better if you are a guest whose mother tongue is English, or a guest whose English is excellent in Germany and Northern Europe. If you write to Koreans, Japanese, Middle Easterners and French people, they will die of old age. I still need to use a dictionary or translation tool to read the email, but I still can't understand it. Do you think the guests will like you?
Churchill said a word, the specific content of which I have forgotten. Generally speaking, real masters should express the most complicated things in the simplest words, and use the simplest sentences and the simplest vocabulary so that primary school students can understand them.
In fact, it is easy to complicate simple things, but it is not easy to simplify complex things. You need to learn to imitate the guest's email more and express what you want to express in the simplest words. The essence of foreign trade correspondence is "simple and simple again". What can be expressed in one word never needs two words or phrases, and what can be written clearly in one sentence never needs two sentences. Who can express the same meaning in the fewest sentences is the best!
For example, when I used to recruit assistants, I tested their mailbox level. I told them the Chinese meaning, and then asked them to simulate an English email. The content is simple. Write an email to tell the guest Mike that the sample received last time has been sent to the factory, but the factory said that the material is not ABS, but PP, and they need to recalculate the price, but the price of raw materials has increased recently. I hope you can confirm it as soon as possible so that we can purchase raw materials and arrange production.
The first applicant wrote:
Dear Mike:
This is Jenny from EDF Limited. We are glad to receive your samples. I sent them to our factory last week and was told that the real material is PP, not ABS you mentioned last time. What happened?
We will give you an answer as soon as we get the quotation from the factory. It will take a few days. Please be more patient. But they also told me that the price of raw materials has gone up these days. Can you confirm the price as soon as you receive it? We will buy raw materials and produce them immediately!
Looking forward to your reply. Thank you!
Best regards,
Jeanne
Is this email well written? To tell the truth, it's not bad. Although the active voice and person are a bit excessive, the content is ok, the expression is smooth, and the vocabulary used is quite simple and not difficult to understand. But isn't it a little wordy? Wouldn't it be better to keep it simple? Let's take a look at the email written by the second applicant:
Dear Mike:
How are you?
We have received all your samples. The factory checked the details and found that the material was PP, not ABS as you said.
Please give them more time to recheck the price, because the materials are different from the previous orders. However, the material is increasing very fast! Therefore, if the price is right, please place an order as soon as possible! We will produce as soon as possible.
Thanks in advance!
Kind greetings,
British private
How's this? Personally, I think it's a little better than the previous title. After all, the combination of active voice and passive voice, "we" only appeared once, not too boring. The content is also a little simpler, and the point is in place. Most importantly, he canceled the purchase of raw materials and directly said, "We will produce as soon as possible." This is simpler. After all, to produce, can we not purchase raw materials? So this is nonsense. The disadvantage is that I personally feel a little verbose.
I will write like this:
Hi, Mike,
The sample has been received and handed over to the supplier. The material is polypropylene, not ABS. The quotation is being prepared and will be sent to you soon.
By the way, the price of raw materials has risen recently. Please make a decision as soon as the price is determined. We will arrange mass production as soon as possible.
Thank you and extend my sincere greetings.
Just say a few words to the point and make it clear. Don't write two sentences if you can express it in one sentence. Save the nonsense. After writing, you can actually read it again to see which sentence can be deleted and which sentence can be expressed in another way, using less first person and more passive voice! When you re-check, you find that it is as simple as it can be, and there are no words to delete, so click "Send" ~ ~
As long as it is concise, clear and accurate, this is a good email.
5) I like to use strange fonts.
In order to attract attention, many people always like to use exaggerated fonts, colors, and even enlarge, bold, italic, and so on. In fact, at first glance, it will make people very uncomfortable. People who often write emails to foreigners will find that guests rarely write emails in strange fonts or bold, or even all capitals. I haven't met anyone except a few Nigerian and African guests. The fonts commonly used in Europe and America are: Arial, Verdana, Calibri, Times new roman, and some with Tahoma font, but relatively few. Some guests in Taiwan Province Province and Hongkong will use PMingLiU font. As for the color, it is usually black or blue. Don't have all kinds of strange colors in the mail, like a rainbow, which makes you uncomfortable.
Generally, the guests in the mail are particularly bold, or capitalized, or marked in red, which is definitely something that is particularly emphasized. For example, a guest's email is as follows:
Dear c:
Please help me send the samples to my Hong Kong office before this weekend.
Thank you.
Rio
This is obvious. The purpose of using capital letters is to remind and emphasize that it must be sent before the weekend! Perhaps this email is very simple, and it is not easy for you to ignore it, but if a long email suddenly adds a sentence asking you to send samples before the weekend when confirming various specifications in detail, it is easy to be ignored.
6) Too much active voice is used.
In English letters, if you carefully consider the writing style of foreigners, you will rarely be filled with people like We and I, but use the passive voice.
For example, we will send you samples tomorrow. People in China like to say that we will send you samples tomorrow. This sentence is true, the grammar is correct and the meaning is clear, but foreigners don't like it. They usually write like this: samples will be sent to you tomorrow. In the passive voice, the man disappeared.
7) Always ask meaningless words.
For example, do you want our products? This sentence is listed at the top of my list of the stupidest questions. If the guest says no, how do you reply? And then it was gone. Besides, you are in sales, you want to interest the guests, and you want to interest them. But this sentence will spoil everyone's fun, which is equivalent to driving the guests to a dead end at once. You must say yes or no.
Are you interested in our products? Are you shopping for * * * *? How is your business recently? Would you like to cooperate with us? These are meaningless words.
Open the letter directly and tell the guests who you are, what you do and what your strengths are. As long as these three points are clearly stated, it is completely enough. We can talk about other things later.
8) I like to use attachments and pictures.
Attachments and pictures are not bad, but if there are attachments or pictures inserted in the first mail, it is easy to be intercepted by foreign servers. Many people like to use quotations when they first contact customers, or package many product pictures, or send electronic samples to customers This kind of success rate is not high, either it is spam by default or it is directly deleted by customers. Except in one case, when you receive an inquiry from a new guest, you can insert a quotation or a picture in your reply.
It is best to contact the guests in full text for the first time, without any pictures or attachments.
Even if it is the first quotation after receiving the guest's inquiry, if it is not specified by the guest, try to avoid using excel or word attachments, and it is best to write it directly in the email. I usually write like this:
Product name: soft-handled solar lantern
Model: HBC-294847/KT
Description: ................. (detailed specifications are clearly written)
Packing: color box
MOQ: 1 1,000 pieces
Pieces/box: 20 pieces/box
Ctn size: 50*40*60cm
Net weight: 20kg/18kg
Q'ty/20': ... personal computer; Q'ty/40': ... Pole-changing switch
Port of shipment: Shenzhen
Payment methods: T/T, L/C, D/P, etc.
Validity: 60 days
F.O.B. Shenzhen: US$ 2.39/piece
CIF Valencia: $2.45/piece
I wrote the above casually. I just want to make it clear that quotations are rarely used. Try to describe it clearly in words, and then add a clear picture below 500K in the attachment. The advantage of this is to prevent many lazy guests from clicking on the attached word or excel references. Secondly, prevent customers from casually transferring your quotation to others for pricing. If the guest wants you to quote a lot of products, but you can't write them all clearly in the email, you can only use word or excel to make the quotation, but it's better to use acrobat to generate pdf format after you finish, which is not easy to change. Because many foreigners are lazy, you have worked hard for a long time to make a complete quotation for him. As long as he deletes the price column, he will transfer the quotation to other suppliers.
9) I like to insert URL links.
When writing a letter, many friends always add their company's website to the content, or add a link under the signature. In doing so, there is also a high probability of being intercepted by the server! It is best to insert these when writing an email to the guest for the second time after the guest replies.
10) The tone is too blunt.
In fact, the email itself is relatively rigid. Reading those cold words in front of the computer is completely different from face-to-face conversation or telephone communication. Look at this sentence "Please give me an answer today". If you face the interview, the guests will not feel any problems and will be happy to say ok or no problem. ; If you say it on the phone, there will be no big problem; But if you put it in the mail, isn't it a bit stiff? If it is changed to today, can you please help me reply? It is very euphemistic to use interrogative sentences and words like could, help, but it clearly expresses your exact intention to get an answer today. Isn't this better?
Therefore, please, help, kindness, possibility, thanks and gratitude are very common in e-mail communication. Unless you are familiar with the guests, you can be polite once in a while, but you don't need it at ordinary times.