Sales Resources

The Secret Of Writing Fantastic Sales Letters

Would you like to know the secret of writing fantastic sales letters?

This is a bit of a leading question because no salesperson in their right mind is going to say no and that is exactly the point of this message!

Writing great compelling sales copy is an essential skill for almost every sales role and yet often so little time is given over to teaching these skills.
Often salespeople are just expected to be able to do it with little or no help or guidelines.

So what is great sales writing and what is not?

Well unfortunately so much of what we see today is very defiantly not great, and often it is down right poor. Often it just concentrates on the sellers company, how great they are, how long they have been in business, how many features the product has etc.

An example of this sort of writing came through my door the other day, as you know I do a lot of work with salespeople who work in the food industry, and the industry magazine is called "The Grocer" which I get every week. Inside this weeks Grocer was an insert that had been put in by a company selling toothpaste. The headline and first paragraph on this insert was:

Putting their money where their mouth is:
"Company 'Name' is harnessing the power of 5 great brands in a major £3.65 million oral care promotion which engages consumers in a fun and interesting way and stresses the importance of the mouth."

Now I don't know about you, but I struggled to stay awake long enough to get to the end of this headline, let alone be inspired to take some action.

So the first rule of great sales writing is:
Capture the attention of your audience!

Imagine that your prospect is running away from a giant fireball and as they run they see your sales letter which is so compelling that they actually stop long enough to read it. Not as daft as it sounds because peoples lives today are so busy and hectic that they are quite literally flat out. So what is it that you have written that is so compelling that they will actually stop long enough to read it?

This is the job of your headline which has to be so interesting to your prospect that they are drawn almost magically towards it. How do we achieve this? Well to quote Perry Marshal, the guru of Internet marketing:
"You capture your clients' attention when you enter into the conversation that they are already having in their own head."

What are the conversations that are already going on in the head of your prospect? What are they worried about, what makes them stressed, what wakes them up in a cold sweat at 3am in the morning?

Identify that and you are guaranteed to get their attention!

So in our example from The Grocer, what could they have done instead? Well I would think that one of the major conversations going on in the heads of the independent retailers that this was aimed at is something like:

"How can I get people to shop in my store rather than the brand new Tesco's superstore that has just opened down the road?"

So our headline could be:
"Revealed - The secret of doubling the number of people shopping in your store!"

Now I think you will agree that that is far more compelling than the original.

The absolute masters at this sort of headline are the people that write copy for the front of women's magazines. This is because they operate in a highly competitive market and yet they know that if a woman picks the magazine up she is very likely to buy it. So the copy they write is highly compelling and gets straight into the conversation that women are having in their own heads.

Here are some examples from the front of just one magazine:

"Found! Your Secret Sex Weapons"
"50+ Super Sexy Bikinis from Just £6"
"Hair Miracles - The 30 Best Serums, Shampoos & Straighteners - As Voted by You"

So how do we use this to help us write great headlines?
Well it's called: "The Cosmopolitan Technique"

To do this, get a collection of women's magazines and write out the headlines from the front. Then taking each in turn, see if you can adapt it to fit your product or service.

So in our toothpaste example we could turn:
"Found! Your Secret Sex Weapons"
Into:
"Found! Your Secret Sales Weapons"
Or
"Hair Miracles - The 30 Best Serums, Shampoos & Straighteners - As Voted by You"
Into:
"Sales Miracles - The 5 best ways of getting more customers - As voted by you"

Get the idea?

Bill Robinson
Successful Sales Club

No one is listening to me!

I work with lots and lots of salespeople from many different companies and product types, many of whom are looking to grow their sales via "cold calling". From this one of the most common questions I get asked is along the lines of:

"How can you grab someone's attention on a first call - if they are sure they do not need my product ?"

My guess is that the people they are calling get lots of people calling them trying to sell them something & they will all use roughly the same script - along the lines of:

"Hello Mr Buyer my name is Blah & I represent the Blah company - We sell Blahs & today I have a special offer for you..."

Unfortunately that is about as far as most people get as the buyer has switched off & given their standard reply of "No thank you, not today" as they put the phone down!

To overcome this there are 2 techniques you can use:

The first is something borrowed from the world of hypnosis & it is called "A Pattern Interrupt" - This is where you interrupt the normal pattern of events with something that is totally unexpected, thus jarring the prospect into listening.

I have recently done some work with a retailer along these lines - Now if you think about it the standard pattern when you walk into a shop is that the assistant comes up to you & says:

"Can I help you?" & you reply "No I am just looking. Thank You." - The assistant then slopes off to talk to their mates - Not a great selling opportunity!

So I have taught them to use various pattern interrupts - The most popular are:

Assistant: "Can I help you?"

Customer: "No I am just looking. Thank You."

Assistant: "Yes I know this display is so good that I sometimes just stand and look myself!"

Assistant "Can I help you?"

Customer "No I am just looking. Thank You?"

Assistant "Oh that is good as we are not charging for looking today!"

Both of these usually have the customer burst out laughing, breaking the ice & building rapport.

So my question to you is - What can you use as a pattern interrupt on your calls?

Once you have a few, test them out to see what works best.

The second is similar to the first & comes from a book on Google Adwords written by Perry Marshal:

"You capture the attention of your customer when you enter the conversation already taking place inside her head."

So what are the conversations that are already taking place in your prospects heads? I would hazard a guess that it is not "Oh I must buy some advertising today"

What is keeping them awake at night?
What do they dream about?
What do they crave?

If you can come up with an opening line that firmly enters the conversation already taking place inside their heads then they will listen to you & in itself this is a pattern interrupt!

Recently, I received a "cold call" that went like this:

"Hello my name is Paul & I represent ABC Company"

Unfortunately that was as far as Paul got as I went into the standard "No thank you" and put the phone down - mean I know but I am a busy man!

I then started to think about what Paul could have done to grab my attention and so I went to his company's web site & found that they are a domain name service that are offering the following:

ABC ltd is pleased to announce its latest FREE service. If you are a new start up business or if you are an existing business based in the UK then you can obtain a FREE DOMAIN NAME today for your business

So given that domain names can vary wildly in price, if I was Paul I would have started with something like:

"Hello Mr Robinson, my name is Paul & I want to give you £25!"

Now that would have got my attention!

Bill Robinson

Do you have THE client from hell?

Of course you do! - This is a loaded question because I know that every salesperson on the planet at some point has a client from hell. I know that you have a client that you dread talking to, the client that every time they come on the phone you wonder what attracted you into sales in the first place? The client, who no matter what you try to do, is always a pain to deal with.

So if we all have difficult clients what is the best way of dealing with them? Because like it or not the chances are you are going to have to deal with them. In fact Murphy's Law says they are probably very, very important to your business so telling them to go away is not an option!

The first question to ask yourself is:

“Are they like that with everyone in their lives?”

The chances are that the answer is a resounding NO! I very much doubt that they behave that way with their nearest and dearest and other people that are close to them. So this means that they are behaving like this because they are getting some sort of benefit, either at a conscious or an unconscious level, and really importantly, it usually has nothing to do with you as they behave that way with every salesperson that they come across! They have found that by behaving this way they are getting something they want; it could be attention, recognition, a feeling of importance, or for many other reasons. From a purely psychological point of view people will only do things that give them some sort of positive benefit. They will only change this behaviour when they can get the same or greater benefit by doing something different.

This means that the good news is if we can find out what the benefit is that they are getting from behaving this way then we can help them to discover new ways of behaving and in so doing rapidly increase our sales performance.

To achieve this we have to approach these clients with a completely different mindset to previous meetings. Instead of thinking that they are the client from hell and someone that we hate to deal with, we need to put our detectives hat on and approach them with the view that we are going to find out what is the key driver for them behind this behaviour.

A really useful tool to help you in this quest is having the ability to be able to put yourself in the shoes of your clients and see the world from their perspective. In fact the American Indians have a saying for this process and that is:

"To walk a mile in someone else's moccasins."

So how do you get into their moccasins?

You need to sit down with a blank piece of paper and pen and imagine that you are sitting opposite this difficult client and looking across the table at your "client" write down the answers to the following questions:

What makes it difficult?
What are you thinking and feeling in this relationship?
If you feel challenged, where does this challenge come from?
Is it about your behaviour?
Do you feel your skills and competence are being challenged?
Do you think your beliefs and values are being challenged?

Once you have all the details then imagine yourself floating up out of your body across the table and down into the body of your client, (if it helps you could actually physically get up, walk around and sit on the other side of the table.) When you are happy that you have actually "become" your client sit and imagine that you are seeing an imaginary you as a salesperson sitting opposite. Then taking your pen and paper again write down the answer to the same questions, but from the clients point of view.

Once you have both sets of answers try to identify what you believe is the key driver to your troublesome client's behaviour and then armed with this new insight decide on your new approach.

Now, I know that this sounds a little strange, but what I would say is don't knock it until you have tried it - So go on give it a go, as after all you only have the awful relationship with your client from hell to lose!

In the Successful Sales Club you can find more information about advanced communication skills, sales psychology and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming).

The Power Of Pausing

By Brian Tracy
Brian Tracy International

All the top salespeople ask good questions and listen carefully to the answers. One of the most important skills of listening is simply to pause before replying. When the prospect finishes talking, rather than jumping in with the first thing that you can think of, take three to five seconds to pause quietly and wait.

Becoming a Master of the Pause
All excellent listeners are masters of the pause. They are comfortable with silences. When the other person finishes speaking, they take a breath, relax and smile before saying anything. They know that the pause is a key part of good communications.

Three Benefits of Pausing
Pausing before you speak has three specific benefits. The first is that you avoid the risk of interrupting the prospect if he or she has just stopped to gather his or her thoughts. Remember, your primary job in the sales conversation is to build and maintain a high level of trust, and listening builds trust. When you pause for a few seconds, you often find the prospect will continue speaking. He will give you more information and further opportunity to listen, enabling you to gather more of the information you need to make the sale.

Carefully Consider What You Just Heard
The second benefit of pausing is that your silence tells the prospect that you are giving careful consideration to what he or she has just said. By carefully considering the other person's words, you are paying him or her a compliment. You are implicitly saying that you consider what he or she has said to be important and worthy of quiet reflection. You make the prospect feel more valuable with your silence. You raise his self-esteem and make him feel better about himself.

Understanding With Greater Efficiency
The third benefit of pausing before replying is that you will actually hear and understand the prospect better if you give his or her words a few seconds to soak into your mind. The more time you take to reflect upon what has just been said, the more conscious you will be of the their real meaning. You will be more alert to how his words can connect with other things you know about the prospect in relation to your product or service.

The Message You Send
When you pause, not only do you become a more thoughtful person, but you convey this to the customer. By extension, you become a more valuable person to do business with. And you achieve this by simply pausing for a few seconds before you reply after your prospect or customer has spoken.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, take time to carefully consider what the customer just said and what he might mean by it. Pausing allows you to read between the lines.

Second, show the customer that you really value what he has said by reflecting for a few moments before you reply.