Writing a Persuasive Message Assignment

Writing a Persuasive Message – Week 3 (9.15)

To get readers to act, to provide them with enough information so they know what to do, and to answer any objections that might prevent or delay action, these are some of the purposes of persuasive writing, as many experts see it. According to Lewis, “letters reflect your attitude” and “the best way to persuade your readers to your point of view is to show them that it will be worth their while to do so.” To this end, Lewis speaks of “reader-oriented” letters.

Assignment: Paying attention to what you have read in your text (specifically Lewis (118) and Ewing (231)) and sound principles of effective communication, write a persuasive message/letter, as appropriate, in response to one of the following cases. (Length of the assignment will be determined in each instance by the individual needs of the letter/message—that is to say, length will be as long as it needs to be to be persuasive and not so long as to be over-bearing and difficult to labor through)

When you have finished writing it, please attach it to the assignment sheet as a Word.doc and turn it into the assignment dropbox. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me by email through FerrisConnect or @ thomaj21@ferris.edu.

CASE A CAN YOU CHANGE THE CEO’S MIND? “Just fire them, the entire third shift, and most of first shift, too,” Bill Tidewater, the CEO and chief investor in Lux Electronics insisted in response to the excessive down time on the assembly line. In general, this has been Bill’s response for employees who have been late to work twice, for employees who have been ill, and for any perceived problems on the assembly line. You work as the Plant Manager, and frankly Bill’s policy is killing you. As a start-up company, you only pay minimum wage, and employees have to work six months before they even become entitled to health care coverage, for which they have to pay $110 a month in premiums, enough that most employees don’t request the health care benefits, probably Bill’s intention. You can appreciate Bill’s concern about the bottom line. After all, as a start-up company you still have a lot of overhead costs, even if the equipment costs have been depreciated out for the next five years, and Bill, who has sunk almost everything into this company, wants to start seeing a reasonable return on his investment. But, it is so confusing. For example, the recent down time on the assembly line is far too frequent, but it is based on equipment breakdowns that are beyond the control of workers. You have been working with the suppliers of the manufacturing equipment Milton Machines to not only repair the equipment but to fix the underlying structural problems that are resulting in such frequent breakdowns. You have convinced them to work without a fee though they refuse to admit that the breakdowns are their responsibility. Firing workers won’t solve that. Bill thinks that with Michigan’s high unemployment rate workers are readily expendable and easily replaced. However, you have been scraping the bottom of the barrel because of the poor compensation package. Many of your employees have come from Manpower and from local charity organizations; a number of them don’t speak English, and many have had a spotty work history. As far as you’re concerned, when you have had to hire new employees, they have been worse than previous employees. Heck, it takes a couple of weeks to get them trained. Your company is getting an ugly reputation as a revolving door. Those who have been late have often been late because failures in the public transportation system. Bill thinks that they should just buy cars if they want to work. Many of your workers now ride together in beat-up old cars. You get what you pay for, you shrug. You really hate disagreeing with Bill because he is usually convinced that his methods are right, but his tendency to fire workers is killing the plant. Finally you decided you had to write to Bill, which is the only way you have a chance of getting him to think the issue through and persuade him to reconsider the Fire First policy he has adopted for a more standard management model. Certainly you can’t afford to fire all of third shift and most of first shift. By the time you finished the hiring process and the training, assuming you could get the workers, the line would be down or significantly below production capacity for three weeks. He would kill you for that. Write to Bill to persuade him to adopt your policies about dismissing line workers and especially to prevent the firing of the current third and first shift.

CASE B NEGOTIATING A BETTER PAYMENT SCHEDULE Bill Tidewater, the CEO, threw a letter on your desk and shouted, “Take Care of This. But we aren’t going to be in position to pay these SOB’s for at least another 6 months.”

Computer Solutions
1432 Broadmore Avenue
Grand Rapids, MI 49505
(616) 455-3232

October 12, 2006

Lux Electronics
432 Chevron Drive
Holland, MI 49508
(616) 237-892

Dear Mr. William Tidewater:

Computer Solutions is proud of the job it did in providing you with the servers, work stations, networking systems, and software that allowed you to start your electronics manufacturing business in Grand Rapids.

As the attached invoice indicates, you agreed to pay us $64,000 for all equipment and installation within one month of the date we completed installation. This contract would provide you with one year free service on all hardware and software. Your invoice includes your signature confirming that you were satisfied that we had successfully completed installation on May 10, 2006, more than six months ago. According to our records, we gave you a copy of the invoice after you signed the confirmation of completion, and we sent a second invoice on June 5, 2006, as a reminder. Your company did not pay the invoice or respond to that invoice. We sent a letter requesting payment with a copy of the invoice to you on July 12 and called you. You indicated to us in our phone conversation that you would pay us by the first of September. It is now October, and we have received no payment.

Computer Solutions cannot provide you with any additional service until the invoice is paid in full. As soon as you pay the invoice in full, we will continue our free one-year service. To avoid court action, please pay this invoice in full within in two weeks.

We at Computer Solutions want your new business to be successful, and an important part of that success will be maintaining a positive reputation with your local vendors.

Looking forward to your timely payment and serving your computing needs,

Joan Ranklin

Joan Ranklin, Vice President of Business Relations


Over the rest of the day, you managed to talk to Bill in fragments about this situation. As CFO of the company, you know you are running in the red as you meet start-up costs. Bill has mortgaged his house to start this business, maxed out his credit cards, and taken a massive business loan from the bank, so he is not surprisingly stressed. It is hard to start a company and keep it going until it shows sustained profitability, but you really don’t need a law suit, either. Bill didn’t pick the six-month figure out of the hat, either. You have landed several major clients, and in two months the plant will be at near full capacity. By January 2009, you will begin to show your first net profit. Bill just doesn’t see where he can come up with the cash right now to pay Computer Solutions. Some companies, like the trucking company and even some of our materials suppliers would cut us off immediately if we didn’t pay their invoices, which would put us out of Business for sure. Though Bill doesn’t like it, he would be willing to pay $5,000 a month to Computer Solutions until March 2009 when we would be in a position to pay the rest of the invoice. He would prefer, however, to pay Computer Solutions in March 2009 when the company had been in black long enough to weather the cost. To pay the $5,000 a month, he and his wife would have to take some out of their own salaries which they live on and probably run up more debt somewhere else, which means interest rates and more long term cost. “You would think Computer Solutions would understand the problem start-ups face,” Bill complained. “They were one once. If we went under now, they won’t receive a dime. If they wait until we are profitable, they will have a long-term customer.” You suspect it isn’t that simple since Computer Solutions will have its own costs for equipment and employee hours; you can bet that they have no interest in carrying your debt. Still, you know a lot is at stake as you sit down to convince Computer Solutions to give you an extension on paying the overdue invoice until March 1, 2009.


CASE C MAKING THE ARTS AND LECTURE SERIES MORE INTERESTING TO STUDENTS - Ferris State University sets aside $30,000 for an Arts and Lectures series. A committee of faculty and administrators, including Mike Terry, the head of Williams Auditorium, pull together a program each year. The head of the committee is currently Dan Cronk, a professor. The $30,000 is to cover the costs not covered by ticket sales. This program includes a number of lectures by leaders in the field and performances by a number of groups. Performances this past year have included the traditional performance of The Grand Rapids Symphony. You have learned that there are several purposes for this series. The lectures are intended to be educational for students, interesting to faculty, and attractive to members of the Big Rapids community. The first obligation of the performances is to fill the house. Given that tickets must be sold to help cover the cost of the performance, the performers that are chosen are the ones that the Arts and Lectures committee believes will be well attended. Many on the committee believe that students are not willing to pay for performances in sufficient numbers. Besides, many in the community have decided that the University has a responsibility to be a cultural center for the Big Rapids community and bring performances that would be of interest to that community. As one faculty member of the committee put it, “This is an Arts and lecture series, not student entertainment unlimited. We should bring culture to campus, not more popular junk.” Most would agree that the performances should have an educational and cultural value. However, several years ago an attempt was to make the performances very educational, bringing performances like the “Chinese Opera” to the area rather than the standard “Nutcracker.” The Big Rapids community and the administration did not like that approach either. The performances, they decided needed to be suitable to the Big Rapids community.
As a result, most students have little interest in the Arts and Lectures series. Few attend, and those who attend usually only do so because they are required to do so by a class. Write to the committee to persuade the members to bring in some performances that would be of more interest to students. Be specific about the kinds of performances that might be of interest. Be conscious of the concerns of the committee and the University. Recognize that many believe students have other avenues, such as Entertainment Unlimited, to bring acts to Ferris that students would like to see.

CASE D You work for Rathwell, a company that manufactures a variety of automated systems. The president of the company, Angela Rathwell, has been very aggressive in developing the company but isn’t very good at or very interested in human resources issue. She pays what she needs to pay to remain competitive in hiring and offers a reasonable but not generous HMO. You have noticed that a number of companies in the area have gone with a new plan to assist their employees in childcare and health costs. Really the plan is reasonably simple: employees sign up and designate an amount they may need for the year. The company takes the money out of their paycheck as a pre-tax deduction. Employees like this because it reduces their tax burden. The money is placed in a separate account which the employees have no control over. The employees submit their childcare, private school bills, or health costs to the human resources office and are reimbursed for the costs up to the amount they set aside. If they don’t use the money, they lose it. It actually goes back to the company. You checked around, and this is, strangely enough, legal under Section 125 of the IRS Code. They are called FSAs or Flexible Spending Accounts including Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account and Health Care Flexible Spending Account. In fact, the company would be smart, for legal reasons, to have two separate plans: a Health Care Flexible Spending Account which allows employees to set aside money for medical problems not covered by health care and a Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account which sets aside money for child care. The maximum for any account can be $5000. Bob Fisher warned you, however, that Angela would be worried about the legal problems. She doesn’t want the company facing investigation by the IRS or the Justice Department. You know you have precedent on your side, but that doesn’t mean that this loophole will be permitted to go on forever. If you were doing this case, you would probably want to check on the form and legality of such plans. Carrie Fisher wanted to know if employees whose life plans changed would get really angry about losing the money. If parents had to withdraw their children from childcare, they might lose a lot of money with this plan. Also, wouldn’t this encourage employees to hurry up at the end of the year and use their health care bucks rather than lose them. Could this actually increase health care expenses and the cost of insurance? Still, as a parent of two children in childcare, you think this would be great. It would cost the company nothing, except some administrative overhead, and could be useful to some families. Write to Angela Rathwell to persuade her to adopt such a plan.