Writing The Ultimate Sales Letter

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By Mario Churchill Copyright © 2007

Writing paper-based sales letters seems to be a dying art in the world of electronic communications. But writing the ultimate "killer" sales letter is a skill which still needs to be cultivated!

Hard selling salespersons can be difficult to deal with: they can cajole you into buying a product or purchasing a service; they can drain your wallet with a few magic tricks up their marketing sleeves, and they can walk away with your money while you are left with a product or service you are not quite sure how to use, or why you should have it in the first place.

Such are the arts of marketing, whether they use television advertisements or radio jingles. Not exempt from this label are sales letters, which are now also very difficult to write.

Why are good sales letters hard to compose?

In the age of instant messaging and emails, salespeople can be caught up in the swiftness and decide to downgrade their writing talents to typing out a few words of text. Sometimes, curt, quick replies can turn potential buyers away; conversely, long, overdrawn replies can bore potential buyers to death and keep their money in their wallets.

The ultimate sales letter will strike the balance right in the middle: it will be long enough to describe a product or service in detail, but it will be short enough so that the recipient will not take long to read and understand its contents. It will be terse enough so that the potential buyers can be convinced to buy the product or service, but respectful so that potential buyers still feel that the sender cares for their welfare.

How can you write the ultimate sales letter?

You need to know that any letter has two main elements: format and content.

Format is highly important, as it organizes the letter into known sections. Organization can allow your recipients to jump to the parts of the letter that they want to go to, simply because they have a clear view of how it is organized. An organized letter, moreover, can also reflect an organized company.

Content is a little bit more tricky, especially if you are used to writing slapdash messages. The ultimate sales letter will contain a description of the product or service, its price, any incentives that the recipient may get if he or she buys the product or service, and how the recipient can purchase the product or service.

All this has to be placed in three or four short paragraphs of text, perhaps along with illustrations, and with an air of both care and respect.

The ultimate sales letter is admittedly difficult to write, and difficult to get right on the first try. If you are after the ultimate sales letter, you will first need to practice a lot. Choose a product or service that you believe in, then write about it, addressing an unknown recipient, and convincing that same recipient to buy the product. When you are done, count how many words you used to sell the product. Did you write down a hundred, or a thousand?

You will need to trim your sales pitch down!

The ultimate sales letter will take no more than two hundred words to make the sales pitch. First, you will need to convince the reader that he or she needs a certain product or service. This process of need creation is where many sales people fail, since it requires subtlety, not hard-selling overeager pitching. When you convince the reader that he or she has a need, then you need to show that you product or service can fill that need.

You may feel the need to compare your product or service with those of other companies'. Although this can be acceptable for some countries and in some contexts, don't do it. You need only tout your product or service as the best. If you can, cite some testimonies from your satisfied customers. Make sure that your product or service is not only attractive, but can be sold.

Have you reached the two hundred word, four paragraph mark yet?

You need to be respectful, and show the reader that your company cares for them. Remember, potential buyers need to know that you care, before they care about what you are selling. An ultimate sales letter will show all this, and perhaps even more, within one or two pages.

The ultimate sales letter should not be preachy or overenthusiastic, but filled with information that is useful and inviting. If you want to write the ultimate sales letter, practice as much as you can, do your research, and watch your tone. If your recipients see your effort and goodness, they will certainly purchase your products and services.

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