One-day Effective Business Writing course

It has been my experience that basic writing skills are in short supply in business. Senior management can normally be depended upon to write a letter or an email without too many errors, but middle management, sales people and junior executives tend to make all kinds of mistakes. Sometimes these are simple oversights, but often they are embarrassing. A case in point is the following e-mail, which I recently received from a marketing assistant.

Dear Mick,

I was passed down you email that you sent to Chris from my manager. She has asked myself to contact you to ascertain how your rates/prices are concluded. In particular how much it would be to write two very short paragraphs for a summary on two different product ranges, as an insight.

Look forward to hear from you

Kind Regards

XXX XXXXX

Marketing and Specialist Support Assistant

The problem is that this sort of bad writing does not only fail to communicate effectively, it also sends the wrong message about the company.

Fortunately, many of the mistakes people make can be put right fairly quickly. In fact, I find I can teach all the rudiments of effective business writing in just one day.

The difference between my one-day Effective Business Writing course and others on offer is me. I am not a teacher by trade, but an award-winning copywriter. I write ads, scripts, mailers, websites, brochures, sales letters and newsletters for companies like Charities Aid Foundation, DTZ, GE Money, Gissings, Institute of Directors, Language Line Services, MMU, Toyota, Wedgwood and the Welsh Tourist Board. I speak from long experience, and I find that I am able to do so in a way that involves the people I teach.

For the last two years, Bunzl has run a sales staff training scheme that includes modules on everything from spreadsheets to contract law. Of twelve different courses, my one-day Effective Business Writing course scored highest with the participants for interest, content and style.

My course includes detailed, practical information on the following: communication; simplicity; structure and planning; the Benefit; length; typefaces; date-lines; salutations; headlines, subject lines and subheads; punctuation, including apostrophes, commas, colons, semi-colons, full stops, ellipsis (dot dot dot), hyphens, inverted commas and speech marks; capitalisation; capitalising abbreviations; sentences and paragraphs; personal pronouns; spelling; authenticity; and editing.

in addition, I show people how to be more creative with their communications by teaching them how to reliably access more and better ideas.

All participants receive a take-away glossary that they can refer to at a later stage.

There is a fixed price for the course, and it is available to up to ten people at a time. You supply the venue; I supply the training.

I can also tailor my tuition to suite any specific requirements you may have.

If you'd like to see my credentials, please click on Home and browse through my website. As you'll discover, I've been practising what I preach for many years with award-wining results.

If you'd like to learn more about my Effective Business Writing course or find out how much it costs, please email me at mick@micksands.com

The Ten Commandments of Effective Business Writing

1.  Thou shalt put thy customer first

2.  Thou shalt wherever possible talk in terms of the benefit to the customer

3.  Thou shalt deliver bad news with compassion

4.  Thou shalt use 11 point Arial in all communications

5.  Thou shalt never use a long word where a shorter one will do

6.  Thou shalt plan thy letter or email before writing it

7.  Thou shalt avoid clichés like the plague

8.  Thou shalt endeavour to keep all communications within one page (take a little longer to write a shorter letter)

9.  Thou shalt use short sentences wherever possible

10. Thou shalt edit, and re-edit