If a clerk should address a customer in such a familiar manner it would be looked upon as an insult. Yet it is no uncommon thing to receive letters from strangers that start out with one of these salutations:
"Dear Benson:"
"My dear Mr. Benson:"
"Respected Friend:"
"Dear Brother:"
While it is desirable to get close to the reader; and you want to talk to him in a very frank manner and find a point of personal contact, this assumption of friendship with a total stranger disgusts a man before he begins your letter. You start out with a handicap that is hard to overcome, and an examination of a large number of letters using such salutations are enough to create suspicion for all; too often they introduce some questionable investment proposition or scheme that would never appeal to the hard-headed, conservative business man.
"Dear Sir" or "Gentlemen" is the accepted salutation, at least until long correspondence and cordial relations justify a more intimate greeting. The ideal opening, of course, strikes a happy medium between too great formality on the one hand and a cringing servility or undue familiarity on the other hand.
No one will dispute the statement that the reason so many selling campaigns fail is not because of a lack of merit in the propositions themselves but because they are not effectively presented.
For most business men read their letters in a receptive state of mind. The letterhead may show that the message concerns a duplicating machine and the one to whom it is addressed may feel confident in his own mind that he does not want a duplicating machine. At the same time he is willing to read the letter, for it may give him some new idea, some practical suggestion as to how such a device would be a good investment and make money for him. He is anxious to learn how the machine may be related to his particular problems. But it is not likely that he has time or sufficient interest to wade through a long letter starting out:
"We take pleasure in sending you under separate cover catalogue of our latest models of Print-Quicks, and we are sure it will prove of interest to you."
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The man who has been sufficiently interested in an advertisement to send for a catalogue finds his interest cooling rapidly when he picks up a letter that starts out like this:
"We have your valued inquiry of recent date, and we take pleasure in acknowledging," and so forth.