By: Jane Sumerset
Submitted: 2010-01-02 17:13:33 | Word Count: 523
When you want to get information about a product, service, event or some other thing, you will usually need to draft a letter of inquiry. It can be informal (such as when you’re asking as a customer) or a little more professional (in case you’re researching a product for your job). If you find yourself needing to compose one, here’s a brief guide to help you turn out the best one possible.
1. If you’re writing as a part of your work, always use your company letterhead, along with your business address, to make sure you set the right tone (even if it is an email). Having your company as the letterhead can make your letter genuine and formal. Since it serves as a reference in order to confirm your identity.
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2. If you’re writing as a customer, use your name and personal address on top.
3. Always use “Dear Sir/Madam” or “To Whom It May Concern” to begin the letter, as you’ll never really know who’s getting it. Besides, you are writing a business letter so it has to be addressed formally.
4. Always refer to how you found their product or offer in the first sentence. This is really important since you are giving your sender some information on how did you found their product or services.
5. Make your requests is clear, whether you want specific questions answered or just general information (such as a brochure). Be specific and tell them the purpose of your letter. Most of your readers won’t read your letter if you are not that specific about the subject and if your letter is not that clear enough for them to be able to understand directly.
6. Skip the pleasantries – there’s no need to play nice. Your letters are likely being read by mailroom employees trying to get through as many of them as they can, so the more straightforward and clear your requests are, the faster it will be for them to serve you.
7. Run your letter through a grammar software at least once. There’s nothing more irritating for those tasked with answering mails than receiving 100 of them that they’ll have to decipher due to bad grammar.
Writing a letter of inquiry serves a lot of purpose and it can come in handy if you know how to write one. As we go to school each day, writing business letters are brought to us by our English learning subjects. But then, a lot of people nowadays do have some problems on how to create one effectively.
This kind of letter writing falls into writing a business letter category. Therefore, you have to set it up in a formal manner where words are carefully chosen since this is all about business deals and negotiations and you are talking also mostly to a lot of professionals or highly respected businessmen.
However, you don’t need to write longer letter inquiries, it should be short and direct to the point. But if you include some financial information about the topic that you are going to discuss, two to three pages are enough.
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