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Casual Articles - Writing Effective Sales Messages
Results and accountability are two big buzz words in today's global market place. What results are you achieving? Who is accountable for achieving those business results? Are two of the more frequently asked questions from the boardroom to the loading dock to the classroom.Since organizations are in business to make money through various sources of revenue, one would think that management would have a business strategy in place to ensure results are consistently being managed and achieved. Yet, during the last 5 years, what I have learned is that many businesses from small business owners to mid size firms with revenues exceeding $20 million do not have an executable strategic plan. These businesses operate by the seat of the pants philosophy or what I affectionately call spray and pray. (Spray it on the wall or within the organization and hope it sticks or delivers results.)Imagine for a moment the cost of airline tickets if pilots could just begin to fly and not plan the best route? And, how many airplane collisions would potentially happen without written and filed flight plans? Some executives in management spend more time planning their vacations than they do they lives or their businesses.Measurable results begin with an executable and written strategic plan outlining and delegating who does what by when. Through written goals that embrace the W.H.Y. S.M.A.R.T. goal criteria, measurement and therefore accountability are integrated throughout the business culture.Some key areas to measure are: Weekly and monthly department goals of sales, units sold, etc. Number of new clients Average sale’s cost Number of referrals leading to new clients Cost to acquire a client Cost to keep a client Sales to close ration Employees’ attendance and productivity Each company should construct their own dashboard of key indicators that need to be watched on a daily,
Use statistics
Using statistics shows that you understand the issues of their business, while demonstrating that your product or service can solve a problem. It also gives your prospect a reason to support your product or service within the company.
Show your prospect's needs
Your sales letter is a very brief sales proposal, so you need to show that you are thinking about your prospect's needs. You might be hesitant to put your best ideas in your letter, fearing that your prospect will use them but not hire your company. That's a mistake. By putting your ideas in your letter, you will make your prospects feel like they are getting something already, and that they will benefit from your products or services. More importantly, you will be demonstrating that you are creative and have your client's best interests in mind.
Use right tone
Use the right tone in your writing. Use active voice. Use the present tense. Be positive. Avoid negatives. K
Window Washing Companies need to maintain a clear image in the community. It therefore makes sense to carefully consider their public relations strategies. But what kinds of innovative things can a Window Washing Company do that have not been done before? Well, how about joining a Neighborhood Mobile Business Watch and Community Policing Program? Why would they do that you ask? Well consider the window cleaning business model if you will;WINDOW WASHING COMPANIES: These companies work in a very low cost, high volume business and know everybody in town, and certainly nearly every business owner or manager on their routes. At $1-2 per pane, they must do a lot of windows to make money. They leave their vehicles in parking lots all over town for 20 minutes to 2 hours and move on. Some do residential as well; parking in neighborhoods for the same time periods. They are a great source for flyer distribution to merchants, retailers, etc. If you decide to have a poster program, they can have those posters up all over town in days on the windows of businesses.You see it makes perfect sense for such a small service company business to promote themselves as positives in the community. This is one way to do just that and increase the businesses goodwill. Consider all this in 2006.
Before writing the sales letter you need to plan about the type of sale campaign that you will conduct. Whether you will send a letter only or will you include brochures, reply forms, special inserts, samples, response cards etc.? How do you plan to market the product or service? Through the Internet, direct mail, email, direct sales, print advertising, etc.? Do you need other advertising or literature to support the sales letter? Who is your competition? How are they marketing this product or service? What is your advertising budget? Are your marketing hopes realistic? Another important decision is to determine the specific purpose of your letter. Whether you want your reader to call for a free video, presentation or demonstration? Or you want your reader to fill out an order form? For these you need to know and analyze your audience and the purpose for writing. Try to form a mental image of the typical buyer for the product you wish to sell. Ask yourself:
• Who is your prospective buyer?
• What motivates a person to buy this item?
• What might the reader want to know about this product?
• What does the product or service do for the one who needs it?
• What can the reader gain from buying it?
• What is unique selling point of the product or service?
• Does your offer appeal to the reader?
• Can you transform him from prospect to buyer?
A sales letter is one of the important instruments of sales promotion. The principles of effective sales letter depends on your communication skill and your ability to convince your reader to accept or act on your recommendations. You may be promoting a product, a service or an idea; your sales letter should catch the reader’s attention, build interest, and motivate him to buy the product or service offered. A good sales letter should possess the following qualities:
Emphasize good looks
Design your document for visual impact. Make it easy to navigate so your reader reaches for it first-ahead of the competition's. You can create professional-looking templates for your sales letter that use your company logo, branding and colors.
‘You’ Attitude
The most effective word in a sales letter is "you". Never begin a letter with "I" because chances are the reader won't get to the second word. It all comes down to selling benefits - your prospects are not interested in the features of your products services, but in what how your products or services can benefit them. Then it must build a reader's trust. It should make generous use of "you" and "your" - so it is clear the customer's needs come first, not your desire to sell something.
Use bullets
The body of your letter should contain key points, shown by bullets. Use bullets because it makes the letter easy to read. As the writer or seller, you benefit by immediately pointing your reader in the direction of the important points you want to make.
Keep your letter brief
It's rare that someone is going to read anything past the first page, so keep your letter to one page. Staying at one page will also force you to be to the point, since a wordy letter is an ineffective letter.
Use statistics
Using statistics shows that you understand the issues of their business, while demonstrating that your product or service can solve a problem. It also gives your prospect a reason to support your product or service within the company.
Show your prospect's needs
Your sales letter is a very brief sales proposal, so you need to show that you are thinking about your prospect's needs. You might be hesitant to put your best ideas in your letter, fearing that your prospect will use them but not hire your company. That's a mistake. By putting your ideas in your letter, you will make your prospects feel like they are getting something already, and that they will benefit from your products or services. More importantly, you will be demonstrating that you are creative and have your client's best interests in mind.
Use right tone
Use the right tone in your writing. Use active voice. Use the present tense. Be positive. Avoid negatives. Ke
Marketing surveys are an excellent way to get information from contacts, prospects, and leads for your PC Repair Business. They allow you to keep in touch and keep current with what is going on after you have made a sales call.Your goal in marketing is to keep your name current in your prospects' minds. You don't want to keep up with the same tactics though. This is where marketing surveys come in. By sending a marketing survey instead of another letter or phone call asking for a sale, you are establishing contact in a non-obtrusive way.Marketing surveys are not pushy. They are centered on the prospect and they don't ask for anything. As an incentive, you can even offer a free tip sheet or report in exchange for completing your marketing survey.When designing a marketing survey campaign here are some guidelines to follow:Keep your marketing survey relatively short and simple.Mail or fax your marketing survey about four weeks after your initial sales appointment, conversation, proposal delivery, etc...Send another marketing survey again about 6 months later, and 6 months after that to keep the dialogue open.Include on your marketing survey questions similar to these:What’s the single biggest problem that you are having right now? What’s the single biggest business problem that you are having right now? How are you currently dealing with these problems? What do you think the solution might look like to these problems? What’s the single biggest obstacle that’s preventing you from moving forward in your project that we discussed earlier? Do you have any friends, family members, or business associates that can really use our help with computer problems?Consider offering an incentive for filling out and returning the marketing survey.Always end your marketing survey with a thank you.Bottom Line on Marketing Surveys A marketing survey essentially serves as a prospect follow up letter. It provides another touch point without c
• Who is your prospective buyer?
• What motivates a person to buy this item?
• What might the reader want to know about this product?
• What does the product or service do for the one who needs it?
• What can the reader gain from buying it?
• What is unique selling point of the product or service?
• Does your offer appeal to the reader?
• Can you transform him from prospect to buyer?
A sales letter is one of the important instruments of sales promotion. The principles of effective sales letter depends on your communication skill and your ability to convince your reader to accept or act on your recommendations. You may be promoting a product, a service or an idea; your sales letter should catch the reader’s attention, build interest, and motivate him to buy the product or service offered. A good sales letter should possess the following qualities:
Emphasize good looks
Design your document for visual impact. Make it easy to navigate so your reader reaches for it first-ahead of the competition's. You can create professional-looking templates for your sales letter that use your company logo, branding and colors.
‘You’ Attitude
The most effective word in a sales letter is "you". Never begin a letter with "I" because chances are the reader won't get to the second word. It all comes down to selling benefits - your prospects are not interested in the features of your products services, but in what how your products or services can benefit them. Then it must build a reader's trust. It should make generous use of "you" and "your" - so it is clear the customer's needs come first, not your desire to sell something.
Use bullets
The body of your letter should contain key points, shown by bullets. Use bullets because it makes the letter easy to read. As the writer or seller, you benefit by immediately pointing your reader in the direction of the important points you want to make.
Keep your letter brief
It's rare that someone is going to read anything past the first page, so keep your letter to one page. Staying at one page will also force you to be to the point, since a wordy letter is an ineffective letter.
Use statistics
Using statistics shows that you understand the issues of their business, while demonstrating that your product or service can solve a problem. It also gives your prospect a reason to support your product or service within the company.
Show your prospect's needs
Your sales letter is a very brief sales proposal, so you need to show that you are thinking about your prospect's needs. You might be hesitant to put your best ideas in your letter, fearing that your prospect will use them but not hire your company. That's a mistake. By putting your ideas in your letter, you will make your prospects feel like they are getting something already, and that they will benefit from your products or services. More importantly, you will be demonstrating that you are creative and have your client's best interests in mind.
Use right tone
Use the right tone in your writing. Use active voice. Use the present tense. Be positive. Avoid negatives. K
What if we can wash equipment, buildings, sidewalks and reuse all the water over and over again? Why would we need to do this you ask? Well consider the muddy mess in Beijing after the mighty sand storm put a layer of sand everywhere and filled the skies making air-quality so bad no one could breath.Next consider that they had to seed clouds to get it to rain in order to clear the air. Next the ground is a muddy mess and must be power washed by thousands of pressure washers, water trucks and mobile units. But wait, we need to conserve the water too? Oh now you see the need for such a system? Well such systems capable of doing this do exist. For instance I have heard of run off water being used like this in the cleaning of Military Equipment, Trucks and Aircraft. For instance Kellogg, Brown and Root uses such a system in Kuwait to save the expensive water. I believe they are either using a "Landa Water Maze" (Landa in WA or the Karcher equivalent (German Company). There is another company in the States, which makes these too and Hydrotech in Riverside, CA has a similar unit they buy thru their vendor and modify from Coastal CA.There are many smaller companies who make such things for run off from construction sites and remediation of things like well, like the cleanup after Major Mother Nature Issues, Debris, flooding, etc, even Hurricanes. So it is possible to clean up Beijing with thousands of pressure washers in a few days without running out of water supplies, so consider all this in 2006.
• What is unique selling point of the product or service?
• Does your offer appeal to the reader?
• Can you transform him from prospect to buyer?
A sales letter is one of the important instruments of sales promotion. The principles of effective sales letter depends on your communication skill and your ability to convince your reader to accept or act on your recommendations. You may be promoting a product, a service or an idea; your sales letter should catch the reader’s attention, build interest, and motivate him to buy the product or service offered. A good sales letter should possess the following qualities:
Emphasize good looks
Design your document for visual impact. Make it easy to navigate so your reader reaches for it first-ahead of the competition's. You can create professional-looking templates for your sales letter that use your company logo, branding and colors.
‘You’ Attitude
The most effective word in a sales letter is "you". Never begin a letter with "I" because chances are the reader won't get to the second word. It all comes down to selling benefits - your prospects are not interested in the features of your products services, but in what how your products or services can benefit them. Then it must build a reader's trust. It should make generous use of "you" and "your" - so it is clear the customer's needs come first, not your desire to sell something.
Use bullets
The body of your letter should contain key points, shown by bullets. Use bullets because it makes the letter easy to read. As the writer or seller, you benefit by immediately pointing your reader in the direction of the important points you want to make.
Keep your letter brief
It's rare that someone is going to read anything past the first page, so keep your letter to one page. Staying at one page will also force you to be to the point, since a wordy letter is an ineffective letter.
Use statistics
Using statistics shows that you understand the issues of their business, while demonstrating that your product or service can solve a problem. It also gives your prospect a reason to support your product or service within the company.
Show your prospect's needs
Your sales letter is a very brief sales proposal, so you need to show that you are thinking about your prospect's needs. You might be hesitant to put your best ideas in your letter, fearing that your prospect will use them but not hire your company. That's a mistake. By putting your ideas in your letter, you will make your prospects feel like they are getting something already, and that they will benefit from your products or services. More importantly, you will be demonstrating that you are creative and have your client's best interests in mind.
Use right tone
Use the right tone in your writing. Use active voice. Use the present tense. Be positive. Avoid negatives. K
Is your marketing pouring some serious money down the drain, because you don’t have a cookie factor? Just what the heck is a cookie factor anyway? And, how can you apply this simple marketing strategy and psychological principle to rake in some big bucks? You Buy $30 Takeaway, You Get Free Coke and WontonsMy smile was bigger than the Great Wall of China the first time this happened. We were regulars at this Chinese food takeaway, but this time there was something unusual. When we paid our bill, out popped a 2-litre bottle of Coke and 6 wontons.Confusion reigned and dollar signs kicked in. Was I paying for something I hadn’t ordered? Was there some communication gap here? My knotted eyebrows must have revealed my bewilderment quite clearly. Before I could go blah, the little Chinese lady behind the counter held up her hand, smiled and said the words that entranced me forever."You buy $30 takeaway, you get free Coke and wontons" She Had Us Trained Like Lab Rats… Before that day, we’d never bought Chinese takeaways for more than $25. Yet magically as we crossed the $30 mark, this entrepreneurial woman made sure we knew the value of instant gratification. Every time we hit the $30 mark, out came the goodies. Every time we didn’t, we got our order and big smiles, but little else.Now we had a choice. We could have our usual, or order just a little more and be rewarded with all the extra goodies that came with it. What do you think we did? Yes, just like you and every one else, our greed took over and our purchases hit the $30 mark like sunshine hits the Caribbean. Say Hello To The Cookie Factor! This in short is the cookie factor. You create a demand for the product with something so alluring that the customer forgets the product itself and concentrates mainly on the cookies. Psychologists call this the psychology of second interest. This effectively means that people shift focus onto the goodies and e
Use bullets
The body of your letter should contain key points, shown by bullets. Use bullets because it makes the letter easy to read. As the writer or seller, you benefit by immediately pointing your reader in the direction of the important points you want to make.
Keep your letter brief
It's rare that someone is going to read anything past the first page, so keep your letter to one page. Staying at one page will also force you to be to the point, since a wordy letter is an ineffective letter.
Use statistics
Using statistics shows that you understand the issues of their business, while demonstrating that your product or service can solve a problem. It also gives your prospect a reason to support your product or service within the company.
Show your prospect's needs
Your sales letter is a very brief sales proposal, so you need to show that you are thinking about your prospect's needs. You might be hesitant to put your best ideas in your letter, fearing that your prospect will use them but not hire your company. That's a mistake. By putting your ideas in your letter, you will make your prospects feel like they are getting something already, and that they will benefit from your products or services. More importantly, you will be demonstrating that you are creative and have your client's best interests in mind.
Use right tone
Use the right tone in your writing. Use active voice. Use the present tense. Be positive. Avoid negatives. K
Life just gets busier and busier. There are more and more things vying for your attention. Traffic gets heavier, lineups at stores get longer, and the ultimate result is that as an already stretched Entrepreneur you have less time to do what you need to, to be successful.Do you wonder how you can change that? This week a budding entrepreneur I have been working with called to let me know of her success. She made enough money this month to alleviate her worries about paying the bills in November. It was a first for her. Initially her worry was, “Can I make money at this?” She is now in the second stage of business start-up, the “Oh my gosh, what happens if this really takes off? How will I deal with success?” stage.Is each piece of business you conduct really new? Is it a slightly different version of the previous work or the work before that? Every client may be different in how they process information and interact with you, but you ask for the same kind of actions/information from each one. You need them to be accountable and must develop ways to make that easy to manage.A curse of the self-employed is the desire to innovate and have fresh challenges all of the time. This often leads to a lack of systems and organization in business. The irony is that if you don’t take the time to set up systems, you will have less time to innovate and will spend more time repeating the same activities. The frustration of this will drive you out of business more quickly than a lack of cash flow.As you conduct business, write down the steps from first client contact to completed outcome. Evaluate how the process worked. What would have made it easier, more successful for you? Ask yourself if you can repeat your success by doing the same thing again and if so, then put the steps into place in your systems. If there were some really difficult and uncomfortable times in the process, ask yourself what could you have done to make it easier? How could you control the outcome and interaction be
Use statistics
Using statistics shows that you understand the issues of their business, while demonstrating that your product or service can solve a problem. It also gives your prospect a reason to support your product or service within the company.
Show your prospect's needs
Your sales letter is a very brief sales proposal, so you need to show that you are thinking about your prospect's needs. You might be hesitant to put your best ideas in your letter, fearing that your prospect will use them but not hire your company. That's a mistake. By putting your ideas in your letter, you will make your prospects feel like they are getting something already, and that they will benefit from your products or services. More importantly, you will be demonstrating that you are creative and have your client's best interests in mind.
Use right tone
Use the right tone in your writing. Use active voice. Use the present tense. Be positive. Avoid negatives. Keep sentences and paragraphs short.
Proof read
Proof read your letter before you send it out. This will help you determine if your letter is clear and if you're getting your point across. Also, misspelled word or other careless mistake will give bad impression to the reader.
One of the most effective strategies to plan and write effective sales letter is to follow the four steps in your letter which are:
• Catch attention
• Build interest
• Establish credibility
• Motivate action
Catch attention
To be effective, a sales letter must catch reader’s attention. Design your document for visual impact to catch the reader’s attention by using graphics such as layout, colour scheme or illustrations. You can grab attention with an eye-catching headline or an interesting opening. This might be a question or statement. The opening should be short, honest, relevant, interesting and stimulating. Keep it quite general to appeal to as many people as possible. There are many possibilities for opening your sales letter that could persuade the reader to buy. Make a compelling promise for the reader, tell a story that the reader can identify with, make an announcement of a new product or service showcasing your unique selling point or ask a question.
The headline encourages your prospects and leads them to your next line. There you start to build their interest and ensure they read the next sentence and each subsequent one.
Build interest
Besides a powerful headline, your sales letter must have an immediate clear benefit for the intended audience. To build interest in your sales message you should highlight your product’s central selling point, the single point around which you will build your sales message. Be upfront and bold about promising a prize or a tangible reward in exchange for time and attention. Whatever product or service you are selling you need to position it so that its benefits provide one or more of the following common desires:
- To make or save money
- To be healthy
- To be popular or to maintain a social status
- To have security
- To have free time or save labour
- To get entertainment, comfort or amusement
- To take advantage of opportunities
- To be good looking
- To achieve inner peace
Show them how your product will benefit them in making their lives better, safer or easier. How will it save them time, trouble, worry or money? Look at their ultimate goal and relate it to that. Why should they buy from you? For example, state what makes you an expert in your chosen field. How can you prove what you are claiming is true? Once you have listed down the key benefits of the service or product and positioned yourself as the person to deliver it, the time is right to deliver your sales pitch. Persuade your reader to buy based on the grounds of what the product or service does for him or her (benefit), not what the product or service is (feature)!
A benefit is what the product or service does, and what the buyer gains from the feature. A benefit is the specific outcome of the feature. A feature is something the product or service already has. Benefits are what motivate people to buy. Bullet point each benefit to make it easier to read. Think about every possible benefit your reader may derive from your product or service. In many cases, people will buy a product or service based on only one of the benefits you list.
Besides the benefit stated at the letter's opening, you can bolster interest by adding high-profile testimonials from associates or former clients. Testimonials from happy customers are very useful for this purpose, as are quotes from established third parties such as industry leaders or reputable specialists. Opinions, figures and independent statistics are also likely to reinforce your message. Ultimate motivations are what people “really”
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