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Crafting Compelling Pain Letters Series

Pain Letter Example and Comparison:

Pain Letter versus Traditional Cover Letter

Human Workplace Crafting Compelling Pain Letters Series eBook: Pain Letter Example and
Comparison: Pain Letter versus Traditional Cover Letter copyright Human Workplace 2015
www.humanworkplace.com

Pain Letter Example

Here is a sample Pain Letter written by Declan McManus, a Production and Supply Chain
professional who is writing to Martin Smith, the VP of Production at Angry Chocolates.
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October 6, 2014
Martin Smith
VP, Production
Angry Chocolates
123 Irritation Lane
Fieldtown, Massachusetts 01874
Dear Martin,
Congratulations on making New England Manufacturings list of Up and Coming Manufacturers
in its latest issue! Thats a huge milestone for Angry Chocolates. Hats off to you and your team!
I can only imagine that forty percent year-over-year growth is pushing your talented Production
team to the limit. When I was at Exclusive Candies just before its acquisition by Nestle, we had
a similar challenge to keep our loyal domestic customers happy while ramping production to
deal with an international roll-out and distribution through Whole Foods.
We narrowly pulled it off and hit 90% on-time deliveries throughout the 12 months leading up
to the acquisition. Now that Exclusive is a Nestle subsidiary and manufacturing has moved
offshore, Im looking for my next challenge.
If keeping your production and supply chain operations up to speed as Angry continues to grow
is high on your radar screen, Id love to chat when your schedule allows.
All the best,
Declan McManus

Human Workplace Crafting Compelling Pain Letters Series eBook: Pain Letter Example and
Comparison: Pain Letter versus Traditional Cover Letter copyright Human Workplace 2015
www.humanworkplace.com

What are your observations about Declans Pain Letter to Martin Smith? Write your thoughts
here.
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Comparison: Pain Letter versus Traditional Cover Letter

What makes a Pain Letter different from a traditional cover letter? Here are ten of the biggest
differences between a Pain Letter and a traditional cover letter.

Differences Between Traditional Cover Letters and Pain Letters

Element

Traditional Cover Letter

Pain Letter

Target
audience

A cover letter is written to no

one in particular. It is written
for anyone who might read
your cover letter.
A traditional cover letter is
stiff and formal. It says in the
Business Frame we all know.

A Pain Letter is written for an audience of one

specific person. You know his or her name and
business situation before you start writing. It is
personal to that person.
A Pain Letter is friendly and conversational. In
our example, the job-seeker Declan uses the
terms ramping, on your radar screen and
hats off, all casual and vernacular terms. The
Human Voice in your Pain Letter is one of its
most important elements!
A Pain Letter is written for maximum relevance.
We want your hiring manager to read your Pain
Letter and to respond to it! Youve done your
research before you begin writing a Pain Letter.
You will only write about things that are likely to
be highly relevant to your hiring manager. Even
the Dragon-Slaying Story you choose for your
Pain Letter will be highly relevant to your
(single) reader.

Tone

Relevance

A cover letter can only be

related to and/or relevant to
the job ad that prompted it.
Writing a cover letter, we
dont know, guess or imagine
anything about the employer
apart from what we read in
the job ad.

Human Workplace Crafting Compelling Pain Letters Series eBook: Pain Letter Example and
Comparison: Pain Letter versus Traditional Cover Letter copyright Human Workplace 2015
www.humanworkplace.com

Structure

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Branding

Delivery

A cover letter generally tells

the reader Here is my
resume and then addresses
the job-seekers qualifications
for the job, based on the job
ad. Unfortunately, the job ad
often
bears
little
resemblance to the actual
needs of the job. Most cover
letters resemble one another
so strongly that they tend to
all look alike.

The four-part Pain Letter format opens with a

Hook that is intended to interest the reader
enough to keep him or her reading the rest of
your Pain Letter and your Human-Voiced
Resume, which is attached to your Pain
Letter.
Following the Hook is a Pain Hypothesis, and
after that comes one pithy Dragon-Slaying
Story that shows how youve solved a similar
sort of Business Pain the type you imagine your
hiring manager to be dealing with now.

Your Pain Letter closes with a call to action in

the form of an invitation to chat or start an email
correspondence; that final element of your Pain
Letter is called the Closing.
There is little to no branding A Pain Letter is a branding document. It begins
in a traditional cover letter. your job-search sales process by introducing the
Most cover letters sound very idea that your target hiring manager may be
much like one another.
dealing with a type of Business Pain that you
can solve.
Your branding comes through in your language,
your
Dragon-Slaying Story and
your
conversational tone. You are strongly
differentiating yourself from other candidates for
a job every time you send a Pain Letter to a
hiring manager.
A traditional cover letter is Your Pain Letter is delivered through the postal
delivered in the way that the service.
job ad specifies, often
electronically.

Human Workplace Crafting Compelling Pain Letters Series eBook: Pain Letter Example and
Comparison: Pain Letter versus Traditional Cover Letter copyright Human Workplace 2015
www.humanworkplace.com

Personality

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Storytelling

Call to
action

You
can
infuse some
personality
into
your
traditional cover letters. In
our experience most jobseekers do not.

A traditional cover letter does

not use a story-telling
approach.

Your Pain Letter shows your personality. You

will address your hiring manager directly, using
his or her first name. (For law, healthcare,
government, the clergy and financial services,
you will use your hiring managers last name: Mr.
Smith, Ms. Barnes, Dr. Peterson).
Your personality comes
through
your
identification of your hiring managers most likely
Business Pain and your Dragon-Slaying Story.
Your choice of the Pain Letter approach as
opposed to a traditional approach is a sign of
your personality, too!
Your Pain Letter uses a story-telling approach
and one compelling Dragon-Slaying Story to
make you come alive for your target hiring
manager as s/he reads your letter.
Your Pain Letter includes a call to action in its
final section, the Closing. Youll say If the issues
Im writing about are high on your radar screen
or If this topic is a priority for you, lets talk!
Your Pain Letter, Human-Voiced Resume and
the overall STOP! Dont Send That Resume
process assume that the relationship between
the job-seeker and the employer is a level
relationship. No one is on top and no one is at a
lower level.

A traditional cover letter

assumes that the job-seeker
will follow the established
recruiting process.
Presumed
A traditional cover letter
relationship sent through the standard
recruiting process assumes
that the employer is on a
higher plane than the job
seeker, and that the jobseeker must follow the
established process and You are simply a business person looking at the
essentially beg for a job ecosystem around you and inquiring as to
interview.
whether potential partners, clients or employers
might be suffering from the sort of Business
Pain you solve.
What are your thoughts and ideas about the table above, showing the differences between a
traditional cover letter and a Pain Letter?
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Human Workplace Crafting Compelling Pain Letters Series eBook: Pain Letter Example and
Comparison: Pain Letter versus Traditional Cover Letter copyright Human Workplace 2015
www.humanworkplace.com

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Try it!
Can you compose your own Pain Letter to a real hiring manager on your list, using Declans
Pain Letter as an example?

Human Workplace Crafting Compelling Pain Letters Series eBook: Pain Letter Example and
Comparison: Pain Letter versus Traditional Cover Letter copyright Human Workplace 2015
www.humanworkplace.com