The Truth About the New Rules of Business Writing

Truth 27. Letters build relationships

Writing a letter of introduction—One of us recently got a snail-mail letter from a doctor who’d taken over a retired doctor’s practice and wanted to keep his predecessor’s patients. He began:

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I am a board certified dermatologist practicing in this area since 2002. I trained at…

And on with more than a page of credentials and a list of dermatology diseases he’s treated that, well, made our skin crawl. The writing is technically fine but fails utterly. It’s the message that doesn’t work—why not?

The doctor appears to have been writing to impress his peers, not prospective patients. Had he considered his audience’s concerns, he might have come up with ...