Effective Letters and Phone
Calls
Knowing
What to Ask
| Knowing
Who to Ask | Knowing
How to Ask
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Following-Up
The key to being effective in your communications is ensuring that what
you have to say is given consideration. To help make sure
that someone must think about what you say it is taking a
personal, thoughtful approach, is imperative. explaining why
you're relevant to the office, reaching the right person
and, perhaps more important, asking for a response.
Tell your story!
A personal approach is the best way to be heard.
The most convincing and effective letters and phone
calls blend a attentive approach to details on key policy
issues with a careful explanation of why it's important to
you and the official’s community. Overall, these letters
or phone messages tend to be seen by the elected official,
not the letters or messages generated by mass postcard, form
letter, or call-in campaigns.
Why Are You Important?
You are relevant to the elected official because you are a constituent.
To show that connection, be sure to include your
postal address on every correspondence and as part of every
communication, whether it's e-mail, fax, or traditional
letter.
Request a Response
Priority tends to go to letters and inquiries that require an answer. If
you ask for a response, it means that more consideration
will go to your correspondence, because someone has to think
about what you said in order to address your comments.
Reaching the Right Person
Depending on what you need, your request may not require the attention of
the elected official at that specific moment. For example to set up a meeting, you need to speak with the
scheduler or Staff Assistant.
For legislative questions and comments, you may want
to first speak with a legislative assistant.
Time to talk?
If you want to have a substantive discussion about a particular program
or policy issues, you should ask for the staff person who
handles that issue and see if you can set up a phone
appointment. That way, you can be sure that they have
reserved time to talk with you where they won’t be
disturbed or in the middle of a frantic day.
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