Stop your prospects forgetting about your sales letter
Jim Logan has put together a [great set of questions](http://www.jslogan.com/content/view/77/) to ask yourself when you are trying to write an effective sales letter. He says you should step back and ask yourself, as the recipient of the letter:
1. What is this entire thing about?
2. Why should I care?
3. What am I being asked to do?
4. Why should I believe any of this?
5. How do I do it?
Your sales letter is inevitably going to be weak if any of these are missing. All of us are bombarded by a huge amount of information every day. In order to break through that and invite a response from your recipient, you have to evoke some kind of emotional response. If you don’t give them a reason to care, for example, your letter is likely to be filed in the bin - not a sale you are likely to close.
The final point, ‘How do I do it?’ relates to the call-to-action of the letter; telling the recipient what to do next should they have decided that they **do** care.
Jim asked if anyone had anything to add to his list. His list of questions looks pretty complete from the point of view of the recipient, but as the author, your job is not yet done. For a campaign to be truly effective, you need to be keeping control yourself. Have you ever ended a letter with:
> If I can be of any future service, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
If so, you have relinquished control to the recipient and your campaign will be weaker as a result. You need to keep a follow-up action for yourself. By following up, you will see much greater take-up of your offer.
We all forget about sales letters - even the ones we have an interest in - because we are too busy and there are too many competing demands on our time. Don’t waste Jim’s great advice and let your campaign fall victim to this - by following up you will greatly increase your success rate.
The same broad principle applies to marketing as well as direct sales - you need to get your brand in front of your target a few times before they decide to take any kind of action.
February 1st, 2007 at 2:54 am
Hi Richard! Thanks for the kind words on my post and questions.
You added a wonderful point! Closing with the reader in control of the next action is a terrible way to end a sales letter. In all my client letters, I add a call to action for the letter’s author (presumably the person who signs the letter) to follow-up with the addressee. The follow-up increases the addressee’s response to the letter’s call to action severalfold.
Related, the same mistake is often made when leaving a voice mail. “Call me back when you get chance” is the easiest message to never return.
Thanks again for the kind reference.