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Unread 18-06-2011, 19:35
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FRC #1197 (Torbots)
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Re: Letter vs e-mail vs phone

All of them can be good, but you have to use them effectively. That's the challenge.

In person is the best; however, it can be difficult to just walk in without any introduction in some cases. This is what you'd want to use for a small business in your town; a larger company would probably need an appointment to get in in person.

By phone can be hard to ignore; you ignore a ringing phone once! However, it can also be easy to forget what was talked about, on both ends. Make sure that you take notes--who you talked to, and what was discussed. Also make sure that you call the right person--calling HR when you need PR could get pretty interesting, in a bad way.

By email can get attention, and it's easy to bounce to the appropriate person inside the company. For this, you want to use the company's contact information (from their website) unless you have contact information within the company for someone in particular. You need to make the title look like something they want to read (hint: "We would like your money" might be a bad idea; "Local robotics team would like to talk about sponsorship" might be better). Then you want to write the email like you would a letter.

By letter is similar to by email, but in this case you need to make certain that the letter is addressed to the right person.

Personally, I would go with an email or letter, followed up by an in-person contact. Telephone can be used effectively, but email or letter are more effective in my experience (then include your contact telephone so that they can call back if they prefer that method).

Also, a couple general pointers: Be polite and professional should go without saying. Usually, you want to indicate that you'd like the dialog to continue (either a second talk about sponsorship, or your contacting them with results, or something similar).
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2003-2007: FRC0330 BeachBots
2008: FRC1135 Shmoebotics
2012: FRC4046 Schroedinger's Dragons

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