P30 – Day 24: Tasting Blood, or, a Sales Letter Primer
I like to think of sales as the ability to gracefully persuade, not manipulate, a person or persons into a win-win situation. ~ Bo Bennett
Back in the olden days (the 90’s, for you whippersnappers out there), I wrote direct marketing sales letters for a company out of Portland, Oregon. The kind you’d get in the mail on a huge piece of 11” x 17” paper, folded in half, stuffed full of highlighted text, in that sexy typewriter-esque font to make it look more personable. The kind that tried to sell you a subscription to a recipe club, or to a series of cheesy home decorating books, or to get you to donate your money to the charity du jour.
Folks, I’ve never felt that sleazy. Not before it, and certainly not since. David Ogilvy said that people who’ve never done direct marketing have no experience at all in the trenches, that they’ve “never tasted blood”. And I’ve tasted a lot of blood in those trenches. My own. From biting my tongue while trying not to gag on the used-car-salesman text.
Sales letters have a format.
There are things that absolutely should be in every single one of them. Things that are there for a reason. But thankfully, with the onset of the internet and immediate communication (and probably due in part to the lack of attention span we have), the High Cheeze Factor has started to dwindle a little bit.
You don’t have to slam your potential customers in the face with yellow highlighted text; you don’t have to give in to overly-hyperbolic copy. In short, you won’t have to take a shower after writing or reading one anymore. (Sure, you still see the old long-form sales letters out there, and they probably even still work for some people. But thankfully, it’s an option, not a requirement anymore.)
Much like the subject of Launches, writing sales emails and copy is another one of those great big huge topics that could fill a book in itself.
When I said there are compelling reasons for every single section that’s in one — there really are reasons, both practical and psychological, why those sections seem to appear in every sales letter you’ve ever received. (And empirical, too; the sections work.) We’re going to briefly touch on each of those sections here, and let you decide how to approach them, with the reminder that you really don’t have to channel your inner Used Car Salesman in order to touch on each of the points.
(And for pete’s sake, skip the yellow highlighter. Please.)
ACTION TASK:
You have a great product and you want to make sure that people know about it, right?
Today, we’re going to write those people a letter. The key to it is going to be one big, universal truth: Your customers don’t care about your product. They care about their own lives. It isn’t just your job to provide people with a thing, it’s to tell them why that thing would help them.
Sit down, before you begin, with some paper and a pen. Old-school, I know. Write down again who it is that your product is for and think about your product from that customer’s perspective. What is it that your product is really giving that customer?
Henry Ford didn’t sell automobiles; he sold people freedom. (And the ability to travel without having to shovel out corrals full of horse fuel.) He sold them speed, and he sold them the future. By our standards, the Model T wasn’t all that comfortable to ride in (shock absorbers weren’t quite de rigeur yet), but it was way more comfortable than horseback.
His customers didn’t know they needed an automobile until Ford explained why they needed it. Before that, none of them knew it was an issue — horses and buggies were just a way of life.
What horses are your customers riding, when they could be in your Model T? What fuel do they shovel every day that you can eliminate? How will your customers actually see the benefit of what you’re teaching them? How can their lives change?
Those things you’re writing down are the basis for your sales letter. Not the features of the product itself, but the way it will change someone’s life in a positive way. Customers could, for the most part, care less about features. (To use the Model T example — Ford didn’t tell people that it featured an internal combustion engine, because nobody cared. They cared that they didn’t have to massage an aching tailbone after an hour’s ride, or that they could get to town without getting wet, or that they didn’t have to feed scads of hay to an automobile.) Focus on benefits to the buyer.
Forearmed with these things, you’re set to write.
Unlike this massive email, the key is to keep things short, sweet, and readable. Aim for short paragraphs of clear sentences.
- Some will tell you to open with a story.
You can do that, sure. But given the attention span of most folks, it’s probably better to get right to the point. Open with the biggest problem your customers can solve, and tell them you can solve it. It’ll catch the attention of anyone having that problem, and those who have it will read on. - Explain the problem.
Why is it a problem? Why does not having the information you’re offering make it suck to be the person without your training? What are the consequences of having that problem? What is the customer losing by having the problem? Empathize with the Suck. You know what the consequences are; you’ve been there. - Turn it around. Explain how your product, your thing, can make that problem go away.
- Tell people explicitly what they’re getting.
Not just a solution to that problem, but also the other benefits of learning what you have to offer/using what you have to sell. Here’s where you get to be specific with those benefits. Use bullet points if you want (and visually, that breaks things up a bit, too.). List your product’s contents, and what each of those contents does to benefit the customer. (That last bit’s key.) - Make your offer.
Give a buy now button. If you’ve got a genuine limited-time thing going on, here’s where to add it first. Give a price (people hate having to click that buy now button to find out what something costs. It seems shady.), and the value of the product to the customer. - If you offer a guarantee, here’s where to put it.
Guarantees can go either way — some people feel they’re a necessity, some don’t. Decide that for yourself, and put it here, if you go the guarantee route. - Reiterate the value of the product, the benefits, and the guarantee, and put another buy button/link here.
And you’re done. The difference between this format and a high-pressure encylopedia salesman is that the focus is all on your buyer and what you can do to help that buyer get out from under whatever it is that’s causing them pain and inconvenience, and possibly money.
One sidenote, too: It is tempting, at times, to also include a “more information” link in your email that goes to your sales page (which we’ll talk about in a few days, and comprises most of these sections plus, well, more.). Resist that urge. Giving people too many decisions will reduce your sales, generally speaking, and the decision to click a link to read more is a less desirable outcome than clicking a link to buy and solve the problem.
Keep it focused and very clear as to what you want that person to do.
The last thing to do before emailing your list with your creation is to write a shockingly hot headline/subject line for it. Looking over what you’ve got, and going back to the same principles of headline writing that we talked about a few days ago, come up with an attention-grabbing headline that’s short and full of drama. Unless you catch their attention right away, nobody will even open the email with your carefully-crafted content inside.
Write your sales letter, and send it today. Or keep it for once you launch. Get in the trenches and taste the blood, so you can use that as kindling for your sales page later.
TOMORROW:
Your product is awesome. You know that, and now your potential audience/customers know that, too. We’re going to look at stuffing that offer so full of value that nobody in his right mind would say no.
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