Archive for category Sales Cover Letter
Let’s Stop Writing Boring Sales Copy
Posted by Mark Satterfield in Direct Mail, Sales Cover Letter, marketing letters, sales letters, sales prospecting on September 16th, 2009
Thought I would take a quick break from reviewing sales copy to share some thoughts that will hopefully be helpful to you in your pursuit of new business.
(OK, truth be told, I actually just got back from the gym and I’m procrastinating since it’s 10:30 already, but I was reviewing copy at 11:00 last night, and besides, writing you is far more fun.)
Anyway, there I was last night reading through a bunch of copy for my coaching clients, and I found that I was getting terribly…bored.
So I put down what I was reading and picked up something different…landing page copy that a client sent.
Same thing. Less than a third of the way through it, I WAS BORED.
Not to be cruel, but if I hadn’t been getting paid to read it, I doubt I would have lasted more than three sentences.
OK, so now I had a choice. I could either go to the home theater and watch “House” with Marian, or I could soldier on. Personally, I think that House has jumped the shark, so I kept reading. (However if it had been “Dexter”…so much for copy review.)
Anyway, more reading copy. Mark’s getting sleepier and sleepier. This obviously isn’t working.
So what I decided to do was try to figure out why I was so bored. Being the process oriented guy that I am, I shuffled Sam and Bailey off the desk (the two most productivity-inhibiting felines that have ever lived) and put 5 of the pieces that I had been attempting to read side by side.
What was wrong with them? Why didn’t they make me curious to learn more? Why didn’t I want to take action? Why did they just make me…not care?
And I came up with the answer.
It’s the reason why a LOT of sales letters, emails, free reports, landing pages and follow up messages don’t get the response that the writer wants.
It’s a fundamental reason why so many marketing campaigns fail.
And I’m going to share the answer tomorrow in my monthly Inner Circle program.
I’d love to send it to you, so if your not a member sign up here.
Talk soon,
Mark
The Best Advice I Got On Writing Sales Copy
Posted by Mark Satterfield in Direct Mail, Free Sales Letter, Sales Cover Letter, Sales Letter Template, email advertising marketing, marketing letters, sales letters, sales prospecting on September 7th, 2009
I’ll admit I sometimes have a bit of a snarky streak to me. Different things bring it out. Last week I did a favor for a friend and spoke to a bunch of business owners about website copy and sales letters. I shared with them the advice I’m about to share with you.
At the end of the talk a lot of of them came up to me, and in that uniquely Southern condescending/pious manner (that just makes you want to slap someone) said, “It was nice to have you provide that nice little refresher for us.”
Here’s where the snarky comes in. I decided to look at each of their websites (I even grabbed their sales brochures on the way out). Thought I’d see how they were incorporating “my nice little refresher”. And guess what I found.
Copy that was just basically a bunch of crap. I’m sorry but there’s just not a polite way to put it. Anyway, here’s the advice I gave the group…perhaps you’ll find it more useful than the dweebs I spoke to.
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If you want to write sales letters or website copy that will actually get read and motivate people to take action, here’s an often overlooked step.
I know this is just my option, but I’m a believer the far too much time and effort is spent on writing and far too little is devoted to identifying the facts about your product or service. For example, the more that you develop a detailed list of facts and their corresponding benefits, before you sit down and write, the better the final result will be.
But hardly anyone is willing to do that. Why? Probably because it takes time, it takes thinking, and we’re a society in which patience is in extremely short supply. But I’m a believer that if you’ll take this step, your sales copy will have a richness to it that will enable your readers to visualize the results that your product or service promise.
Marketing mastermind Garry Halbert used to suggest writing down one feature or fact about what you’re selling on a 3X5 index card. He’d make fun of you (an believe me that wasn’t a pleasant experience) if you weren’t able of come up with at least 3-dozen. I always found that the first 5 or 6 were pretty easy to come up with. But by the time I got to 24 I felt the well had run completely dry. But there would be Gary, pushing, pushing, pushing. “Come on you poor excuse for a marketer” he rasped, “Dig, what else do you offer?”
And the interesting thing was this. The most compelling facts, the ones that actually resonated the most with the reader, the ones that hooked their attention and motivated people to take action, were invariably among the last group of facts I came up with.
Everyone thinks that copywriters sit down and just “start writing”, As if they had a magic pen or something. Or they think that “anyone can do it.” A mindset similar to-I can boil water therefore I am a chef. Hardly anyone gets the hard work, that goes into writing sales copy that actually achieves it’s purpose of motivating people to take action.
But I digress.
Now once you have your list of features or facts prepared you need to turn them into something that will interest your reader. Remember the old saying, “Nobody buys grass seeds, they really buy the promise of beautiful lawns”. So for each fact we need to turn them into benefits. Or, as one wag puts it, the answer to, “Why should I care?”
For example I am working with a HR consultant who offers a brand new assessment tool for hiring sales people. Suppose to be a good predictor of sales success. One fact about this assessment tool is that it has been tested (or as they say in psychological terms, “validated”) on over 15,000 sales people. OK, that’s an interesting fact. So now we have to determine what the benefit is, the “why should I care?” factor.
*You should care because this means that you no longer have to rely on your gut instinct.
*You should care because if the big boss wants to hire some jerk but the assessment says you shouldn’t, you’ve got evidence to support your decision.
*You should care because this means that whether you’re hiring one or 100 reps it’s a good predictor of success.
*You should care because it means that the test has been around a while unlike all those other assessment tools that pop up and then disappear into the morning mist.
Validated by 15,000 sales people is a fact. OK, but not a compelling reason to use it. No longer having to rely on your gut instincts (which make most anyone who has to hire someone very uncomfortable) is a real benefit. That’s the stuff you want to emphasize in your sales letters and on your website.
OK, as I said in the beginning…I realize that you’ve heard all this before. But before you dismiss what you just read as a “nice reminder of something I already know”, let me ask you to take a look at your sales letters or website home page. How compelling is it? How chocked full of “why should I care?” benefits does it contain? Remember that there’s a world of difference between knowing something and actually implementing something. So if how you’re presenting your business in print needs a tune up keep these thoughts in mind (or even get someone-like me-to write something great for you.)
How Long Should A Sales Letter Be? The Ideal Length Of Your Next Lead Generation Letter.
Posted by Mark Satterfield in Direct Mail, Free Sales Letter, Sales Cover Letter, Sales Letter Template, marketing letters, sales letters, sales prospecting, sales tips on September 1st, 2009
One of the more common questions that I get asked in my sales training seminars on lead generation is “How long should a sales letter be?”
Although there are no hard and fast rules, and no shortage of conflicting opinions, here’s what has worked best for our clients.
First, it’s important to differentiate between writing sales letters in the business-to-business market vs. writing letters directly to consumers. Although there is a natural overlap, there are some crucial distinctions. One of which is that consumers tend to have more time and willingness to read a lengthy sales letter than those who are perusing your letter while they’re at work.
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***In the consumer market, the old saying that “the more you tell, the more you sell” has some bearing on how long your letter should be. When marketing to consumers, a 4-page sales letter out-pulls a two page. A 8-page letter does better than a 4 page. At what point are there diminishing returns? There really doesn’t appear to be one as long as two variables are kept in mind. 1) Mailing to a list of highly targeted prospects, and, 2) Writing in a style that engages readers. In other words, “If I’m interested in the topic I’ll read what you have to say (as long as it’s interesting) but if I’m not interested than one page is probably too much.”
There are tactics copywriters use in terms of format and structure that make longer letters more likely to get read. The first is the use of stories. As one successful writer of fund raising letters (probably the most difficult and competitive market for copywriting) commented, “Tell me that 1,000,000 people died of starvation in Africa, and I’ll probably just throw the letter away. However, tell me the story of Sam, who’s an orphan, reduced to eating bugs to survive, and I’ll whip out my checkbook.”
A second suggestion concerns layout. With a lengthy sales letter it’s likely that it will be initially quickly scanned, rather than read in detail from the very beginning. That’s why sub-headlines are so important. They propel readers from one section to the next, and for the reader who is just scanning, they indicate areas that may be of particular interest to specific readers.
However in the world of B2B sales letters the rule of “the more you tell, the more you sell” doesn’t apply so neatly. It’s still important that your letter be targeted to a very specific niche. The more the reader sees a reflection of themselves in your opening sentence the greater the likelihood is that they will read further into the letter. And, it should go without saying, that the tone and prose of the letter should be welcoming and appropriately informal so that it engages the reader.
This is why letters that are one or two pages in length tend to do the best.
This makes a great deal of sense when one considers the environment in which the B2B letter is read. It’s quite different from reading a letter in the comfort of your home. In consumer mailings the initial decision on whether to pay attention to the letter is done over the trashcan and largely based on what appears on the envelope. Once the letter makes it into the “read” pile, it stands a good chance of actually getting read in its entirety.
That’s different than letters that are received at the office. First, they may not actually arrive to the intended reader in their envelope. It is far more likely that they are in a pile in an in-box. (What to put on the envelop to get it past the screener has been discussed elsewhere.)
But the main difference is the level of distraction that exists in the B2B environment. As the letter is read, the phone is ringing, there is someone waiting outside the office and the prospect’s mind is trying to juggle multiple tasks. Thus it is imperative (even more so than in writing to consumers) that the first sentence hooks the reader’s attention. There are multiple ways of doing this but my favorites are here:
There is another factor that must be considered when writing any sales letter but one that is critically important in the B2B market. “What do you want the person to do once they have finished reading the letter?”
With a 6/8/10 page letter we can actually sell products (albeit low priced ones) to readers. However in the B2B market the level of services that are being offered doesn’t make this practical. Unfortunately the “call to action” of asking for a meeting tends to be too much-too soon and usually fails to elicit a positive response.
The calls to action that work the best in B2B are either 1) offers of additional information or, 2) a statement that the writer will be calling to arrange for an appointment in the next few days. Offers of free information will result in a higher response rate, but using the letter as a lead-in to an appointment setting call can work well also. When I was an executive at Kraft, if a letter seemed on point, I would give it to my secretary with the directions that “If this person calls go ahead and schedule a brief meeting.”
Naturally if you want more information on what to say in those follow up calls my telephone marketing scripts will be helpful. Find out more here.
Some Free Sales Letter Advice For What To Put On Your Envelopes
Posted by Mark Satterfield in Sales Cover Letter, Sales Letter Template on July 25th, 2009
Without meaning to belabor the obvious, the first step in any successful direct mail campaign is to get the letter opened. Seems like it should be simple enough. Just address it to the person and now you’re done.
Ah if only it was so easy.
So let’s start with the envelope. What you put on it (and conversely what you leave off) will have a significant impact on your response levels.
If you’re in the B2B market, your goal is to make what you’re sending look like professional business correspondence. B2B differs from the consumer market in one important area-there’s usually a screener involved. What we want the envelop to communicate to the screener is “This is something I should pass along” rather than “This is something to pitch.”
In order to do this we need to eliminate anything that might indicate that what’s inside is promotional in nature. For example, I’ve tested plain white envelopes against cream colored ones, and the “non-generic” envelopes outperform the “Buy 10,000 for a buck” envelopes by a wide margin.
This is even more important if your prospect is a senior level executive at a big corporation. If that’s your target you’ll want your envelop to mimic the look of personal business stationary. You’ll want a heavier weight which gives the envelop greater stiffness and a certain gravitas of importance.
What about envelope size? Interestingly, slightly smaller than normal envelopes outperform standard or larger sizes. The exception is if you are marketing to consumers which has an entirely different set of guidelines to observe. I’ll write about that sometime later.
Although this would appear to be obvious, the address needs to be printed in a type that is consistent with the look of personal correspondence. The good news is that most letter shops are equipped to handle this task. However make sure you have a small trial run done before you launch the whole campaign. I’ve found on occasion, the print on the envelopes looks “washed out” which sends a clear message that this is a mass produced mailing.
This next point is important and it can as a surprise to me.
If you’re buying a mailing list from a list broker, make sure that address is in standard Title Case, rather than ALL IN CAPS. Apparently the post office prefers CAPS in addresses thus a lot of the mailing list services provide their lists in this format by default. Obviously no on in their right mind would send personal correspondence addressed to someone in ALL CAPS. I had one mailing that got a great big ZERO response because I didn’t catch this.
Finally pay attention to the return address. I’ve tested a variety of options and have found that simply having your mailing address with no name and no company mentioned performed the best. Having just your name and address sends the message that a resume is enclosed. Not what you want.
Adding A Personal Touch To Your Mailing
Posted by Mark Satterfield in Sales Cover Letter on July 9th, 2009
Now let me say from the get-go, I haven’t actually used this, but I am intrigued and may at some point in the future.
As we all know, the biggest challenge in direct mail is getting our letters opened and read. There have been a lot of studies that show that hand-addressed envelopes get opened at a dramatically higher rate than those we crank out on our printer.
The problem naturally is, who has time (or the hand strength) to manually address all those envelopes. (Especially if you’re someone like me who never quite got the message about gripping the golf club too tightly and now can’t seem to write a complete sentence.)
Well, whenever there’s a need, sooner or later there’s a service that pops up. As profiled in the July issue of Deliver Magazine (itself a clever effort by the US Postal Service to get us to mail more stuff) there’s a new service from Think Ink Marketing. They’ll hand address standard No 10 white envelopes, apply a proprietary stamp similar to a 44-cent stamp and bar code the envelopes for maximum postage discounts.
Most interestingly…they claim a response rate from their mailings of up to 9% (that’s huge).
Naturally, in order to get that type of response you need more than just a hand addressed envelope. The offer, the tone of the letter and the mailing list are all crucial. But it would be interesting to do a split test and see how much hand-addressed envelopes kick up response.
What do you think?
A Really Boring Sales Letter
Posted by Mark Satterfield in Sales Cover Letter, Sales Letter Template on July 7th, 2009
I think most sales letters don’t work because they’re boring…or so obviously “sales letters” that the reader immediately turns off.
Do you ever notice that most sales letters never sound like someone talking? It’s as if someone all of a sudden goes into “sales letter writing mode” and all their natural communication skills go out the window.
However, every now and then I stumble across what (at least in my own mind) is a great sales letter. Here’s one that was written by a partner at a very large consulting firm which I think is terrific. It has a real down to earth style and I’ll bet it did real well. (I’ve omitted the relevant names to preserve confidentiality):
“Dear Prospect,
I ‘m a Partner with Flotsum & Jetsum and the leader of our Consumer Products and Retail Practice in New York … and I’d like to find an opportunity to introduce myself to you.
I’m sure you are deluged with consultants – and I’m equally sure that you know how to fend them off. Nevertheless, I think understanding our capabilities could be of great value at some point down the road.
Flotsum & Jetsum is a world leader in the operationalization of retail strategies. We have recent cutting edge experience – for apparel retailers – on private label sourcing, global supply chain transformation and category profit improvement. Our clients highly value our pragmatic, pick-it-up, put-it-in-your-pocket approach to performance improvement.
Let me be specific … with real, past 18 month successes:
• For a leading fashion retailer, we identified $100 million of EBITDA improvement through store operations improvement, indirect sourcing, and improved cycle time.
• For a leading consumer electronics retailer we improved store operating productivity by 15%, including a 40% improvement in Receiving processes.
• For a leading office supplies retailer we achieved $150 million in savings through NFR sourcing.
• For a youth fashion retailer, achieved >$40 million in EBITDA improvement through consolidation of their distribution system and an improved import supply chain.
I’m sensitive to sounding like a consultant ambulance chaser, but I guess I’ll take the risk. Assuming your willingness to allow me a few minutes, I’ll call your office to find a convenient time to meet. I promise to be efficient with your time and to leave my “sales hat” at home.
With best regards,”
Obviously this is written to very targeted audience (as any good marketing letter should be) and I really like the tone and the honesty. It made me believe that the writer was both highly experienced in the field but also a “real” person. Not a lot of pretense (which is a pleasant difference from so many consultants).
Do you have an interesting sales letter? Something new and different that’s worked for you? Send it over I’d love to take a look. My email is mark@gentlerainmarketing.com or just post it here.
Talk soon
Mark
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Sales Cover Letter For When You Get Ignored By A Prospect
Posted by Mark Satterfield in Sales Cover Letter on June 27th, 2009
Sales Cover Letter-Stand Out From The Competition!
Posted by Mark Satterfield in Sales Cover Letter on June 26th, 2009
Sales Cover Letter-Target The Right Niche.
Posted by Mark Satterfield in Sales Cover Letter on June 25th, 2009
A sales cover letter that targets a specific niche is always going to generate a much better response than one that is written to a general audience. I think that a large part of the difficulty small business owners have when prospecting for sales is that they don’t target the right niche market. Far too often there is a tendency to select a market based on the first group that comes to mind or the industry that we once worked in. Neither is an effective method for selecting the most responsive group.
The problem that most people have when selecting a niche is that they focus on whether a particular group has as need for your services. On the surface, this would make good sense. However, simply having a need is often not enough. Lot of people are likely to have a need for your services however they may either be unwilling or unable to pay. In many industries, going outside for advice is considered heresy. Thus if you offer consulting services one of the first questions you need to ask is whether people in this particular industry purchase what you have to offer.
A good way to determine this is by analyzing whether any of your competitors are advertising to this group. While on the surface a lack of competition might be viewed positively, a total lack of competitive activity is a warning sign. This often means that others have tried to market to this particular niche without success.
There are two resources you can use to determine whether there is likely to be a market for your services. The first is to simply to enter into the Google search engine some of the terms that people would typically use when looking for your services along with niche your targeting. Thus you might enter a search term such as, operations consulting for community banks. What you want to pay particular attention to are the paid search listings that appear at the very top of the page and also run down the right hand side. Click on a few of these ads to see who else is targeting this niche.
If two or three of your competitors are running ads, this is a sign that the market you are selecting has promise. In fact, ads from two or three competitors is an ideal number. That shows that the market has potential but that it is not overcrowded with competition. When selecting a niche we want to strike a balance. There should be enough competitive activity so that we know it is a viable marketplace while not so overrun that it will be enormously difficult for us to stand out.
After we have done are preliminary market research on Google, the next step is to determine the viability at a deeper level of analysis. For this we want to go to association that specializes in your target market and subscribe to their online or offline publication. Again we want to see who is advertising. The reason this step is important is because advertising in either of these mediums tends to be expensive. It is one thing to simply put up a Google Adwords campaign and pay a few cents per click. It is an entirely different matter to pay thousands of dollars to run an ad in a specialized publication. The fact that one of your competitors is willing to do that is a clear signal that this is a viable niche market.