Writing Effective Sales Letters: A Creative Process, Lecture notes of Sales Management

Download Writing Effective Sales Letters: A Creative Process and more Lecture notes Sales Management in PDF only on Docsity! VOL. 43, NO. 3 HEAD OFFICE: MONTREAL, MARCH 1962 On Writing a Sales Letter SOME PEOPLE look upon the writing of sales letters as an occupation that demands a minimum of effort, but it is not so. This is one of the most difficult forms of selling. Itis a job you have to think about. Writing a sales letter is as creative inits own way as are short story and play writing intheirs. Itis, too, as dynamic as any other sort of salesmanship. Selling has not yet been reduced to a formula. Besides presenting a case, your sales letter needs to show sincerity, intelligence, integrity, good humour and genuine interest inserving the reader. To succeed in its mission, your letter must do these four things: get attention, arouse interest, create a desire, and evoke action. You may pique curiosity by opening with a state- ment of something new, or of something old in a new form or setting; you go on to show the benefit of this new thing to the reader; you give proof of the efficien- cy, durability and good value of the article; and you gain a response by making it easy for the reader to decide that he wants and can obtain this article. Sales letters are one evidence of the change in advertising technique. A sales campaign is no longer a matter of blasting away at random in the hope of bringing down whatever gets in the way. We live in an advertising world in which market research, copy testing, and other devices thrive. A company needs to know before starting a campaign the market it wishes to tap, the selling points which will be most effective, and the best method of carrying out its purpose. Because of its directness, flexibility, variety and economy, the sales letter furnishes a satisfactory medium for a great deal of merchandising u der these circumstances. Its user can, so to speak, "call the shots". He can limit his expenditure to a few dollars or he can spend thousands, reaching a few selected prospects or scores of thousands of secondary pros- pects. There are people who say that advertising by mail is unduly wasteful because much of it goes unread. This is true only when shoddy pieces of advertising literature and unimaginative m chanically produced letters are sent out. They seem to announce at once "I am not worth opening". The growing body of evidence about mail readership and habits tends to show that well done sales letters win attention andcreate a climate favourable to the writers’ products. When you write a sales letter which turns out to be particularly successful, you will find that you have taken these steps: you determined the prospect’s needs, you described goods or services to meet those needs, you showed that the goods or services do meet the needs, and you passed along your conviction that your company’s goods had superiorities over those of competitors’ goods. Vital in this presentation is that you address the prospect individually and say something that is of interest o him. You talk with him as you would if you were face-to-face. What is salesmanship ? Selling is your presentation of the virtues in your goods or services in such a way as to persuade pros- pective customers to buy your company’s products or to take some other action. To do this effectively your letter should be, above all, clear and easy to understand. It should, before trying to persuade, succeed in convincing the prospect of the quality and reliability of our goods. Linking the interests and desires of your prospect with your goods or services i a fascinating game. If your letter shows logically, clearly and fairly that the goods offered will satisfy important purposes in the prospect’s life or business, and if it tells con- vincingly about he economy of the purchase, then the fundamental desire that is in everyone to want to own, to use, and to enjoy the goods that give satisfac- tions will move your prospect to buy. Such a happy ending will not be reached without planning and thought. This is not to disparage inspiration and enterprise, butto say that fullest use cannot be made of sales letters without all four. In planning a sales letter it is useful to write down something like an armed forces appreciation f the situation. What is the sales proposition ? What is the point of strongest interest o the person you are addressing ? What is the purpose of your letter -- to make an immediate sale, to introduce a salesman, to sharpen up a newspaper or radio or television or magazine series of advertisements ? What facts must you tell ? Most important of all is the question: what do I know about my company’s product? The more a salesman knows about what he is selling, the better he can shape his sales story. The more a salesman can show his acquaintanceship with the qualities and uses of his goods, the greater will be the confidence of the prospect in giving an order. The prospect cannot be expected to respect a salesman who has not enough respect for himself to become acquainted with the products hesells. This, of course, means going into the woods to scratch the bark of trees as well as standing off to view the forest in perspective. It may mean learning about he principles ofdesign, construction, materials and processes. No amount of writing skill can make up for lack of substance. You may shout your opinion about your product until you are blue in the face without moving a prospect o buy. He is interested in the facts, not your opinion about he facts. Pertinent facts for the writer of a sales letter to uncover include these: How is the product used? Where is it used ? When is it used ? Why is it used ? Why is it not used more than it is? Has it any new uses ? This sort of knowledge does not come from scanning catalogues or manuals or fly-sheets. It demands knowledge of acquaintance. But there is more to all this than fitting one’s elf to write authoritatively: one also learns to write interestingly. This can be the most delightful part of the writer’s job: to go out into the unknown territory ofthe factory or store or office and explore it for sales possibilities long overlooked. They need not be big things, but merely simple things which make talking points. Complete knowledge is not within the range of human capability. Wedo not need to imitate the poet in the story who, in order to describe a fractured leg had to go out and break his own leg. But we owe it to our quest for excellence in our letters that we find out everything necessary and everything possibly useful. This includes facts about competing oods and services. To know what the competitor supplies gives you points of comparison about quality, performance and cost. Comparison is the basis of reasoning. Had we never known joy, it would be impossible for us to identify sorrow as sorrow. If there is no essential difference between your goods and those of a competitor, you are driven to the use of incidental differences. These, though comparatively weak in argument, may provide you with points of appeal if you do not try to blow them up so as to make them seem vital. Know your prospect’s wants Your letter cannot be made to appear as if you were interested in the man you are writing to unless you make an estimate of his wants and interests. Frank Kingdon tells in his book How to Master Salesmanship about a list he saw in the office of a candidate for the presidential nomination. It gave the name of every delegate, and opposite every name there was a notation of the one appeal which could most effectively be made to him. That was thorough preparation for a big selling job. The failure of a big percentage ofall sales efforts may be traced to the fact that the salesman started too soon to talk about his product without connecting it with some specific want or buying interest. By emphasizing the point that is vitally important o your reader you set the stage for your presentation. Personalize this to understand its importance. How are you going to appeal to a man of middle age who arrives home from work, shuffles through the mail, has dinner, and sits down in front of his television set or radio until bedtime? Surely not by writing about your wants or your company’s uperlative goods. You can catch his attention only by hitting his interests. You are writing to help the reader, perhaps to solve a problem for him, or to offer a service he is likely to want. The key to the heart of the selling letter is this: "Why should he do what I am asking him to do ?" Your prospect ishungry for facts that will enable him to do a better job or to live more happily: if you handle your proposition from his point of view in language which touches ome of his motives it will be next to impossible for him not to find it interesting. It is worth reminding ourselves every once in a while that human desires and their satisfactions form the fundamentals upon which all selling methods should be based. Some things that people want are necessary totheir survival, but they also want things that contribute to their comfort and enjoyment. Some wants are natural, like food and water, but others are acquired. It is part of your job to ferret out what primary or secondary wants are satisfied by your goods or services. Then you must describe in a winning way how the goods you offer will contribute to your prospect’s satisfaction.