Department Store Memo Dr. Back

To: Dr. Back

From: Lynnette Lockwood

CC: N/A

Date: 2-28-14

Re: N/A

The purpose of the memo from Mr. Lee to Mr. McGregor was to persuade Mr. McGregor to reconsider his discount policy at the department store; therefore I used the persuasion-oriented structure message style. The memo was being written by Mr. Lee who is Mr. McGregor’s trusted assistant. Mr. Lee’s role would include expectations from Mr. McGregor that he would be able to clique potential policy changes and suggest improvement to those changes.

Upon further evaluation I was aware that Mr. McGregor was on his college debate team and did admire careful reasoning. I felt that he was the type of audience that is well informed, however could become resistant and maybe hostile if not approached in a diplomatic manner.

I started the memo with a descending informed format by putting my most powerful points first. The first point was acknowledging Mr. McGregor’s previous discussion with me about the discount policy and the immediate plan to make changes. I agreed with his assessment that the policy needed a revision, but then suggested a more conservative standard discount reinforcing that this would help him reach his goals of simplification, adding all personnel and increasing profit margin. I then addressed his concerns about managerial resistance and I offered alternative suggestions of company benefits for that level of employee in addition to the standard discount. I felt that offering additional benefits would improve their acceptance of the policy change.

I made additional suggestions about how Mr. McGregor could increase profit margin by elimination of non-profit sales of tobacco and candy, increase junior clothing that has a higher profit margin, which would attract younger sales clerks, and modernize the store.

I continued with suggestion of security cameras to decrease “lost” items and sale of those future lost items to cash paying customers. I placed this suggestion near the end of the memo. This suggestion I felt would be very beneficial to the company however Mr. McGregor may be resistant to such a suggestion of this extreme a modernization of his store.

I ended the memo with the least powerful point I wanted to make regarding placing required purchase amounts for a free delivery. This would positively affect the profit margin, but this idea could dissatisfy long term account customers and with Mr. McGregor’s historical perspective of the family business he may not accept this idea. 

Throughout the memo I used an inductive approach to include facts about the business that Mr. McGregor would acknowledge because of his knowledge about the company and therefore increase his acceptance of my suggestions and defuse his potential hostile reaction.

I ended the memo by acknowledging Mr. McGregor’s concerns as valuable and his future goals for his company could be achieved by accepting some form of change.