Effective business writing leads to increased client satisfaction.
The three part Business Writing Skills series has been designed for those looking for practical strategies to improve the quality and effectiveness of their written correspondence.
Through the use of worked examples based on common correspondence used by the financial services industry, presenter Verne Ordman will provide delegates with practical strategies which can be immediately implemented into daily work.
Series outline
By completing the full three part series you will learn about how to:
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Get answers to the most FAQs about writing style and develop an easy to use Business Writing Style Guide.
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Get rid of clutter and inconsistencies that often form a cloud over the written message you are communicating
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Get to the point without alienating the reader
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Convince the reader that your response is reasonable – even when it may not be what the reader wants to hear
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Practise evaluating documents with a critical eye for reader-focussed content, relevance, missing elements, structure, and faulty logic and organisation.
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Practise editing content for plain English, and professional and editorial style.
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Use an objective benchmark to assess and review the writing effectiveness of an audit report, proposal and business case.
Session 1 - Tips to instantly improve your writing
One of the biggest challenges organisations face is how to create a consistent and professional business writing style throughout the organisation. It appears that different groups within the same organisation have their own set of style rules. A clear and well-defined style guide promotes uniformity and clearly outlines the set of standards to follow.
In this session, learn techniques to ensure stylistic clarity – what to avoid and what to look out for.
Business Writing Style
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Common grammatical errors
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Sentence construction
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Word and sentence punctuation
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Case and capitalisation
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Numbers, digits, symbols, time and date
Plain English Writing Styles
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Choose clarity
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Remove complicated vocabulary
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Cut long-winded phrases and unnecessary wordiness
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Use the correct ‘voice’
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Use specific references rather than general descriptors
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Use positive language
In this session, you will:
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Get answers to the most FAQs about writing style and develop an easy to use Business Writing Style Guide.
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Get rid of clutter and inconsistencies that often form a cloud over the written message you are communicating
Session 2 - Effective responses in challenging situations
Every day we are faced with having to write difficult and potentially emotional messages.
Unprofessional, defensive and aggressive writing pushes profits out the door and costs organisations millions of dollars each year. This means it is vital in business to be able to respond in writing to complaints or disputes, write bad news documents and sensitive messages.
Using the 8-Step Response Plan, learn how to respond to a nasty dispute letter in a professional, polite and non defensive manner.
This session will also detail how to use the Response Plan to evaluate and edit other potentially emotional documents.
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Letter of complaint
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Refusal email
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Second request for information
In this session, you will learn how to:
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get to the point without alienating the reader;
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convince the reader that your response is reasonable – even when it may not be what the reader wants to hear;
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minimise the potentially personal impact your response has;
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avoid starting a long sequence of emotional replies to replies (‘flame warfare’); and
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avert misunderstandings and future negative repercussions.
Session 3 - Practical business writing
Get hands-on experience using a number of checklists to evaluate and rate a variety of documents.
With each example document, we will work through a step-by-step review and coaching process to highlight how each document deviates from the business writing rules. We will comment on the structure and style issues and show how to effectively edit and rewrite sections of the documents.
In this session you will:
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Practise evaluating documents with a critical eye for reader-focussed content, relevance, missing elements, structure, and faulty logic and organisation.
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Practise editing content for plain English, and professional and editorial style.
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Use an objective benchmark to assess and review the writing effectiveness of an audit report, proposal and business case.
Session inclusions
All delegates will receive a copy of the presentation and any handouts.
Who should attend
These practical sessions are designed for people in the financial services industry that must write formal documents as part of their role. If you regularly write letters, reports, proposals or business cases, this series will provide practical information that you can apply to your day-to-day work.
CPE Hours
Earn 4.5 CPE hours for the 3-part series or 1.5 CPE hours per session.
*Register for the 3-part Series to receive 10% discount off the individual session pricing.
This session is part of the following series
Business Writing Skills Series
Presenter
