In business writing, there’s one rule you just can’t break: It has to be about the reader, not about you.
Most people understand this already, at least intellectually. They’re sophisticated buyers of products and services, and they use a similar lens to decide whether to read something: They calculate whether it will provide value to them. Yet when the roles are reversed and they’re the writers, they often forget this lesson — they’re smart buyers but irrational sellers. That’s because they see their writing, on some level, as a piece of themselves. They think it will confirm and validate their ideas.
