Write to sell

Sending emails and letters and having written material can be very important. Make sure you follow the structure and include the components that are proven to contribute to a successful sales piece

The written sales message

There are times in business when we need to use the persuasive powers of the written word to help us achieve a sale.

You each have your own level of creativity and flair, or access to someone in your company (or a supplier) who can provide it, and your own writing style, which may be influenced to a large extent by the nature of your business and your target market.

Here we take an overview of the basic accepted structure and components that are proven to help to produce a decent sales piece, whether it's a letter, advertisement, whatever, as they are all really variations on the same theme. As with the spoken attempt to sell you want to make the written communication.

• As personally relevant as possible, and
• Talk about what your product, service or solution can do for the prospect and has done for others, not about how wonderful you and your company are

These are two of the essential differences between sales messages that are designed to produce response and corporate missives. Corporate style communication is fine if your aim is to keep your name in front of your target audience, make a general impression and influence long term sales. But it's difficult to really measure its effectiveness without the help of a professional research agency.

If the nature of your business meets the criteria in the Health Check on this website, we know that it is relatively high value, low volume, and therefore it is unlikely that your prospect will buy "off the page" from you. That is to say directly from your website, advertisement, letter, etc. So with your sales message you have to give enough believable reasons for the prospect to enter into or continue dialogue with you. You want to elicit a positive response to this communication that results in:

• The prospect contacting you to find out more about your organisation, product, service or solution
  
  Or, at the very least:
• A neutral, prepared-to-be-convinced attitude when you follow this communication with a telephone sales call

Starting with a blank sheet of paper can be very daunting for many people so, before you start panicking, the good news is that it's going to be easier than you probably thought, for two very simple reasons:

1. Our old friend A.I.(c.)D.(c.)A. from our Pattern of the Sale is just as applicable for the written as the spoken word to attract attention, gain interest, build desire and call to action - the essential difference is that, in one-way rather than two-way communication, the "c"s cannot stand for committal - in this case they represent generating credibility in the message and feelings of confidence in it amongst the prospect audience
2. If you regularly carry out any of the fact finding activities as outlined in Fact find your way to success and follow the 4-step process in Make each new business meeting count (both elsewhere on this web site), you already have much of the ammunition you need to be able to put together the most powerful sales message for your company

Let's start at the top:

Attention

• 90% of the reason anyone responds to a sales message is because of what's in the headline or opening statement
• An effective headline can bring in up to 17 times more response than an ineffective, weak one, even if the rest of the copy is the same

Proven attributes of a successful headline are

• Self interest
• Curiosity
• News

Use any combination of these together with powerful words to generate a powerful message that will appeal to your target audience - remember: You're not trying to attract the whole world! And don't waste words by putting your company name there - the only one who'll be impressed is you.

Interest

• It's estimated that only 20% of prospects that are initially attracted by a headline actually continue on to read the rest of the message

So you need to develop ways to keep the reader's attention. And there are various techniques we can use that will help.

You can't enter into a truly interactive dialogue with a written sales piece but your exploratory telephone research, telephone- and face-to-face sales efforts to date will have revealed the questions your prospects want answers to; the key issues or "hot" buttons that are of most interest to them.

So you bring them into play throughout the Interest stage.

Desire

This is where your presentation of offer comes in. Depending on the nature of your business and your sales objectives you could offer a

• FREE trial
• FREE estimate
• FREE audit
• FREE demonstration
• FREE delivery
• FREE information
• FREE survey
• FREE report
• Unique benefit
• Unique guarantee
• Etc.

And you should incorporate appropriate testimonials to add to your credibility.

Action

This may sound incredibly obvious but make it clear what the next move should be. Add a P.S. (and a P.P.S.) to inject some urgency into the action you want him to take.

Finally:

• Be creative in your use of layout, typeface, sub headings, strap lines, images (logos, pictures, etc.) and colour throughout the sales piece
• Test your sales pieces for effectiveness but only alter one element in each case - otherwise you won't know which alteration is responsible for the heightened (or lesser) response levels or the quality of respondents