In
Sales, It's What You DON'T
Say That Closes The Deal
From
Timothy A. Gross, Executive Director - Educated Media, LLC
Dear
Friends;
As you
know, your sales letter and your selling process are the
most critical thing to your success.
You've
probably heard lots of tips on what you SHOULD say in your
sales letters to increase response.
Today'
I want to talk about something equally (if not more) important:
What
you SHOULDN'T say.
Writing
a successful sales letter is like building a house of cards.
The whole thing can come toppling down through a single
misstep, through a single error.
In writing
sales letters, the thing that'll kill response more than
anything else is to make a statement that appears
to the reader to be untrue.
A sales
letter is based on the claims made by the writer, and a
good sales letter backs up those claims as much as possible
with facts, figures, and information. but ultimately, it's
not the facts and figures that convince the reader to buy,
it's the trust that is built in the sales letter.
This
is an important point:
| A
sales letter can quote all the facts, statistics, and
information in the world, but the reader still has to
take most of the claims made on faith. If the reader
has any reason to mistrust the statements made in the
sales letter, you've just lost a sale. |
Consider
this example:
Let's
say you tell your spouse that you're going to visit a friend
for awhile and that you'll be home by 8:00pm.
At 3:30am,
you walk in the front door.
Your
spouse is livid: "Where were you? What happened? Why
didn't you call?!!"
Then
you start into your sales pitch. (The sales pitch you're
using to try to avoid being kicked out of the house:)
"Well,
you know my friend lives halfway up the mountain, and on
my way up I blew out a tire and was stuck on the side of
the road. My cell phone didn't get any reception up there,
and I realized we didn't have a spare tire in the car. I
kept trying to flag down other drivers, but no one would
stop. It was awful, I was stuck there with no way to contact
you for hours..."
So far
so good, that sounds like a reasonable explanation. Then
you go one step too far:
".And
that's when the spaceship landed and I was abducted!"
-Oops.
Pack your bags, the sales pitch failed.
Here's
important point #2:
| For
the sake of effectiveness of the ad, it doesn't matter
whether the statement that appears to be untrue is true
or not - Obviously, I don't expect you to lie in your
sales letters, (that's illegal!) but if it APPEARS
to be untrue to the reader, you've made a terrible mistake. |
Here's
an example:
A few
years ago, I did a wacky sales experiment, and offered $100
bills FREE on the Internet. All the recipient had to do
was pay the $10 s&h fee to have the money rushed to
them by overnight delivery.
It wasn't
a lie: I was fully prepared to give $100 to the first person
who responded, but no one did - Because it SOUNDED
like a lie.
That's
an extreme example, but it doesn't have to be that extreme
for the House of Cards to fall.
Another
example:
I was
recently reading a pretty strong sales letter for an online
product that came with resell rights. It looked good until
the author said something like:
"If
you just sell one copy a day, you'll make $xx,xxx in a year.
Anybody can do THAT. Heck, my GRANDMOTHER could do it!"
-
Warning - Warning - HOUSE OF CARDS FALLING!!!!
OK,
guess what: That's a load of crap. "Anybody can sell
one a day for a year, even my Grandmother." That's
an out-and-out blatant lie. These types of exaggerations
can just kill your response, because they cause your potential
reader to not trust you - and for good reason!
When
I'm hired to rewrite clients' existing ad copy, what I remove
from their existing ad is often as important as what I add.
Here's
a checklist of things you should leave out, or at the very
least test leaving out (you shouldn't make any changes to
your sales letter without testing the response -It's impossible
to predict what will help or hurt an ad, the only way to
know for sure is to a/b test it.)
1) Information
that doesn't lead to the sale (cut out all sales
letter "filler" and just keep the bare-bones info
that promotes the sale).
-Your
sales letter can be as long as it needs to be to provide
all the relevant facts, but it still has to be concise,
and everything in it needs to lead to the sale. Don't include
a laundry list of things in the sales letter that don't
strengthen your case.
2) Dubious
claims EVEN IF THEY'RE TRUE, unless you take the
time to back them up with unquestionable proof.
3) Prompts
to order before you've stated your case fully.
You need to have proven the value of what it is you're offering
before you throw a price at your prospect, otherwise your
prospect won't fully understand the value of what you're
offering, will probably think your price is too high, and
stop reading the sales letter before you've fully educated
them of the value of what you're offering.
In
Conclusion:
Read
your sales letter with "new eyes" from your potential
customers' point of view, and see what you can REMOVE from
your sales letter to increase its effectiveness.
Think
of it this way: Your potential prospect is like
a scared rabbit who has been attacked in the past by all
types of marketing predators. Have you ever tried to catch
a frightened animal you were trying to help that thought
you were the enemy? It's tough!
The
only way you can hope to succeed is to quietly, carefully
convince the rabbit that you're approaching it to try and
help, that you're not a predator. It takes patience. It
takes soothing talk.
Every
false or questionable claim, every boorish statement, every
push for a sale that's not in step with the natural selling
progression will send your "rabbit" high-tailing
it for the hills, and for good reason.
Happy
"hunting". :-)
To
your success, Timothy A. Gross
P.S.
- Everything I talk about presumes you are selling a worthwhile
product that will enhance your customers' lives in some
way. If you're not, no amount of marketing techniques will
keep you succeeding for long.
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Shocking
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Beginning Marketers' *Perceived* Challenges - And How
To Tackle Them
Uncovering
The Hidden Benefit Hot-Buttons Of Your Prospects
Beyond Features & Benefits: Why they REALLY buy
Don't
Follow The Crowd - The Crowd Is Failing!
Is following the "Guru" advice of giving the appearance
of being a big business hurting Your profits?
