双语给老板写邮件的七大必杀技

2021年2月10日发(作者：兔丝燕麦)

作者

: Herman Vantrappen

战略咨询公司

Akordeon

的总经理赫尔曼?万特拉彭认 为，在写电子邮件的时候，要把

自己想象成设计师，去体察读者的需要，揣测他们的想法 。

双语：

If you really want to get your message across, make sure you understand the

mindset of the

person you’re emailing.

如果你希望电子邮件能有效地传递信息， 那么就一定要去揣摩读者的心态。

Amazon AMZN 1.60% lists close to 6,000 book titles on ―business writing.‖ You might

wonder why you need to read anything else on the subject. Well, once you start

practicing what you’ve learnt from

many of these books, you might find that an email

of yours still fails to achieve its ultimate purpose: to evoke the response you want. A

good email persuades its reader to take a specific action, such as: approve an

investment proposal, provide information, agree to provide a testimonial, or accept

an invitation. So, if your text doesn’t get your reader to act as you intended, you

have wasted both your and her time.

亚马逊（

Amazon

）上关于“商务写作”方面的书将近有

6,000

种，再让你读这方面的

相关内容，你或许会觉得难以理解。不过，一旦你把从书中学到 的付诸实际，你就会

发现你的邮件仍然无法实现那个最终的目标——让读者作出你想要的 回应。一封出色

的电子邮件能够说服读者采取特定的行动，比如：批准一份投资方案、提 供信息、同

意提供一份证明或者接受邀请等。因此，如果你的邮件无法让读者按照你的希 望采取

行动，你就浪费了别人和自己的时间。

Below you’ll find seven tips to help you be a better email writer, which I have drawn

from my 25 years’ experience as a strategy consultant

. What these seven tips have

in common is that they focus on the psychology of the reader. Why is that important?

As soon as a reader receives a text, he mentally pigeonholes it into one of several,

possibly damning categories: ―ignore and ditch,‖ ―read later,‖ ―read now, but no

action.‖ Obviously you want your reader to pigeonhole your text in the ―read and act

now‖ slot.

以下 是能帮你写好邮件的七个建议，这些都是从我担任战略顾问的

25

年经验中总结而

来。这七大诀窍有一个共同点，那就是都非常注重揣摩阅读者的心理。 为什么这一点

非常重要？在对方收到你发出的邮件后，他就会马上在心里将你的邮件进行 分拣归类，

很有可能就归入了那些糟糕的类目下，比如：“忽略并归类为垃圾邮件”、“ 以后再

读”、“现在读，但不采取行动”等等。而显然，你所期望的是对方将你的邮件归 类

为“现在看并马上采取行动”。

To get your reader to respond positively, it helps to understand a little about social

psychology and behavioral economics. Specifically, two great books serve as a good

intellectual foundat

ion to these fields. The first is Robert Cialdini’sInfluence: The

Psychology of Persuasion, which addresses the psychology of compliance, i.e. the

factors that cause one person to say yes to another person. The second is Richard

Thaler’s and Cass Sunstein’

sNudge, which examines systems that help people

improve their ability to select options that will make them better off. While these

books don’t deal with business writing per se, they contain relevant and applicable

insights. They lead to tips that you will find complementary to the often technical tips

about business writing that you find elsewhere, such as ―avoid the passive voice,‖

―avoid jargon and acronyms,‖ and ―vary the length and structure of your sentences.‖

如果想要你的阅读者做出 积极的回应，懂一点社会心理学和行为经济学会对你有所帮

助。具体来说，关于这两个领 域的一些基础知识，有两本书非常值得一读。第一本是

罗伯特?希尔蒂尼（

Robert Cialdini

）的《影响力：说服的心理学》（

Influence:The

Psychology of Pers uasion

），这本书对顺从行为进行了心理学分析，即什么因素能让

一个人答应他人的要求；另外一本是由理查德?塞勒（

Richard Tha ler

）和卡斯?孙斯坦

因（

Cass Sunstein

）合著的《推动力》（

Nudge

< p>
），这本书对各种系统进行了分析，

帮助人们提高作出对自身更为有利选择 的能力。虽然这两本书本身不涉及商务写作，

但是包含了一些非常实用的相关理论。在这 些理论的基础上，我总结出了以下的建议，

它们与你在别的地方学到的那些常见的商务写 作技巧，比如“避免使用被动语态”、

“避免使用行业术语和缩略语”、“变换语句的长 度和结构”等，将互为补充。

Let’s move on to the tips.

下面就说说这七个建议。

Tip 1. Take into account where and when your boss reads your text. In today’s fast

-

paced world of instant, omnipresent and byte-size hypercommunication, it is easy

and tempting to fire off a text to your targeted reader as soon as you have finished

writing it. But think about when and where he will receive your text. For example, it

may not be a great idea to mail a request for a two-months leave of absence to your

boss on a Friday evening when he is waiting at an overcrowded airport for a delayed

return flight home after three days of intense and unsuccessful negotiations with

union delegates. Your request may be perfectly reasonable and eloquently worked

out, but you’d better wait for a more auspicious time and place for it to land in your

boss’s inbox.

技巧< /p>

1

：要考虑到你的上司会在何时何地阅读你的邮件。在当今这个快 节奏的时代，

以字节信息为载体的高速通讯可以随时随地实现。因此，写完了一封电子邮 件之后，

你也许会忍不住马上发给对方，而这也很容易实现。但是，请考虑一下对方会在 何时

何地收到你的邮件。举个例子，如果你想要给老板发封邮件，申请请两个月的假，那

么周五晚上就不会是一个很好的时间点。这个时候，你的上司正被困在拥挤的机场，

等着晚点的飞机带他回家；在此之前，他刚刚与工会代表进行了长达三天的紧张谈判，

结果不欢而散。你的请假申请也许理由万般充分，措辞流畅有力，但是你不妨多等一

< p>
会，让你的电子邮件在一个更好的时间和地点进入上司的收件箱。

Tip 2. Stand out in a crowded inbox by using as businesspeople are, they

cannot afford to think too long about every decision they have to make. They often

make fairly automatic decisions based on past experience or just one written clue

that is presented to them. It starts with simple things like the subject header of your

mail: it should convey opportunity and benefit to the reader rather than effort and

goodwill from him. For example, when you write an email to solicit participation in a

benchmarking exercise, the heading ―Study‖ may evoke more dreadful as

sociations

than ―How to improve performance.‖ More profoundly, make yourself likeable to your

reader, for example, by referring to shared interests or flattering him. Of course

you’re walking a fine line: you don’t want to mislead, deceive or manipulate yo

ur

readers; you simply want to convince, persuade and facilitate.

技巧

2

：利用主题线索让邮件在收件箱中更为显眼。商务人士都非常忙，因此他们无

< p>
法为作出一项决定花费太多时间。所以，他们往往是根据过去的经验，或者仅仅根据

呈现给他们的一条书面线索就下意识地作出决定。首先是给电子邮件拟定标题，这不

难做到。标题要让阅读邮件的人感到这是机会，并且会有好处，而不是要他们费力做

什么事情，或者谋求他们给予恩惠。例如，你要写一封邀请别人参加基准管理培训的

电子 邮件，如果标题含有类似“学习”这样的字眼，就会让人产生“如何提高绩效”

之类让人 不安的联想。更高深的技巧是，要拉近邮件阅读者和你的心理距离，例如，

提及共同利益 或夸赞对方。当然，这种做法稍不留神就会走偏：你不想去误导、欺骗

或操纵读者；只是 想劝导、说服、促使他们作出决定。

Tip 3. Personalize your are occasions when you have to send

essentially the same text to several readers, such as when you need data from

several colleagues to build a business case. You can either broadcast a standard

request or send personalized requests separately. While the broadcast initially may

appear more efficient to you, you risk running into the so-called bystander effect.

First, each person reasons that others will respond, and therefore will do nothing.

Second, each person waits for a response from the others to find out whether the

request is really that serious or important. You will probably get a higher response

rate if you take some time to personalize your messages. Of course, be a bit more

sophisticated and less lazy than simply replacing ―Dear Team‖ by ―Dear Suzy‖.

技巧

3

：对消息进行个人化处理。有时候，你会需要将相同的文本发送给多名读者。

比 如在需要从多位同事那里获取数据来建立商业案例时。你可以群发同一条请求，或

者针对 不同读者分别发送请求。虽然群发乍看之下效率较高，但是也让你面对着遭遇

“旁观者效 应”的风险。首先，每个人都会认为其他人会做出响应，因此什么也不做。

其次，每个人 都等待其他人做出反应，以判断请求是否真的那么严肃或重要。如果花

一些时间对消息进 行个人化处理，你可能会获得更高的回复率。当然，这并非只是潦

草地将抬头从“大家好 ”换成“苏珊你好”，而是要在细节上下些功夫。

Tip 4. Beware of the mystery readers in your guide on business

writing worth its salt will tell you that you have to take into account the various

reader segments that your text is addressing. For example, if you’re writing an

assessment of an acquisition target, you know that both your CEO, your company’s

Board and their investment banker, each with different needs, may read it. Much

more tricky to deal with are the mystery readers

—

that is those you don’t know

about. For example, one of your targeted readers may (inadvertently) forward your

text to a person who in your mind should be the last to read it. Remember the