The Guide to Writing the Ultimate Sales Letter

You want people to buy your product or service.

That is the end game of all business ventures. In order to do that, you must overcome the hurdle of converting potential clients into buyers. No small feat, especially in today’s world of sales pitch saturation.

So how does one prompt a potential client into turning the corner to becoming an actual client? An effective sales letter can be the catalyst for that change.

But, you ask, how to do it effectively? Writing an effective sales letter is a skill as much as an art, and that should be reassuring. Where artistic talent is just that, a talent, creating a gripping, convincing sales letter is also a skill. With practice and knowledge of how to apply tried and true sales concepts, anyone can create a sales letter that will convert new clients.

By following these ten steps and applying them to your sales letter, you will increase the odds that your letter will entice your target audience into action instead of being doomed to a quick trip to the old round file.

*Note: The word product is used here for brevity’s sake. Understand it to mean either product or service.

1.    Know your product.

In order to effectively sell a product, you must understand it. At first, this may appear to be a rather obvious point, but it is one that is often overlooked. The problem is that effectively communicating the benefits of a product to a layperson can be difficult to overcome. Think about what this product means for your target demographic. How would someone who knows nothing about the product see it? What key points must they understand about it? What objections would they have to purchasing it? How can you preemptively overcome these as a part of your sales letter?

It is your job as the writer of the sales letter to boil the benefits of this product down to manageable chunks. You want to distill the essential facts to the readers detailing why they need this product. By identifying these points before you put pen to paper or finger to keyboard as the case may be, you will be positioning yourself toward writing a powerful sales letter. By anticipating objections and preemptively formulating your answers to them, you entice the reader to continue reading.

2.    Know your target demographic.

Who will you be selling to? This is as important as understanding your product. By knowing your target demographic, you can tailor the tone and style of the sales letter to appeal to your audience and you can also predict which benefits of your product will have the greatest impact as well as which objections will likely arise. By anticipating these needs and desires, you will have a greater degree of control over the potential client’s reaction to the sales letter, which is why you are writing it in the first place.

Understand why the potential client will use your product. Give specific information about each unique situation. Do research. The more knowledge you arm yourself with in advance, the more you can tailor your letter to create a need in your target audience. By combining this with product knowledge, you will be able to more effectively show that you have the answer to this need.

Match benefits with a client’s desires. If you can do this, you are more likely to create a sense of need and, in turn, action in your client. By overcoming objections that inevitably come up in any sales pitch, written or otherwise, and doing it in a natural way, the client will feel that his or her questions are answered as they arise. In order to do this, you must be able to think as your client would think. Imagine yourself as your target demographic. If you were your client, what would you want out of a product? What would stop you from buying it? Why would you want to do business with one firm over another? By understanding these concepts before you begin the writing process, you will be better equipped to create an effective sales letter.

3.    Organize your sales letter.

Prewriting is as important as writing. Before you begin penning the ultimate sales letter, you must first know how you are going to say what you wish to say. At this point, you have already determined what you will be saying and to whom, but you must now determine how to most effectively structure the letter to achieve the desired result.

A good sales letter, like any good letter, must have an introduction, body, and conclusion. Structure your sales letter so that it contains all of these elements. This does not mean you must use the standard 5 paragraph essay format we all learned high school.  As a matter of fact, big blocks of text will turn off a reader, but the general structure is sound. You want to wow the client with a gripping introduction, educate them as to the benefits your product offers them, overcome potential objections, and then in the conclusion, motivate them to take action.

Your sales letter will be telling a story. It will not look like any kind of story you may be used to seeing; it may consist of only bullet points, but in essence that is what you are doing. The morale of your story is that your potential client needs your product.

By following this format, you are communicating ideas to your client in a manner they will be intimately familiar with. You will avoid confusion and increase your odds of getting the all important conversion.

4.    Choose your tactics.

What sales method will you be using? It is important to know in advance as this, along with the other information you have gathered, will help determine how to most efficiently achieve your goals. Choosing the right sales tactic is largely dependent upon product knowledge and customer knowledge.

In general, you motivate a client into action by eliciting either a negative or positive response in them. Do you want them to see your product as something they need or they will suffer a negative consequence? Then stir negative emotions in them and show your product to be the answer to avoiding them. Or do you want them to see your product as something they need to give them an edge? If so, play up the positive forces that will come as a result of them buying your product. Do you want to educate your client and sell through objectivity? Give numbers, facts and let the strength of the product sell itself. Do you require immediate action from prospective clients? Use the take away. Inform them that if they want the product or service in question they must act soon or an impending change will take place that will make the deal less appealing or possibly not available at all.

The amazing thing about sales, and the reason that it is a dynamic process, is that you can combine any of these elements into an effective sales letter. While the underlying principles remain the same, the intelligent sales letter will utilize a fresh combination of these elements to create engaging copy that motivates a client to take action and become a paying client. The following examples illustrate this point well:

Are you selling a service to protect a client in some way, such as insurance or security? Then you may want to motivate them by eliciting negative emotions. Create a sense of impending negativity if they do not purchase the product you are selling. By stirring negative emotions such as fear, insecurity, or potential lost sales to a competitor that will utilize the product in question, you will elicit a response in your audience. Combine this with a follow up to educate your potential client as to how the product will prevent or solve these problems and you will have a very effective sales letter.

Are you selling a product that provides a competitive edge through superior quality? Then an effective tactic could be to focus on the positive aspects your product will provide. Use numbers, facts and objective comparisons to illustrate the quality of your product. Follow this up by playing on the positive motivators such as professional pride in being a part of the cutting edge, or the competitive advantage it will provide to them or their business.

5.    Create a sense of Urgency

Through both your tone and word choice, you want to convey a sense of urgency in your potential client. You want them to take action as soon as possible. Create a sensation of need. Imply that without the product negative events are eminent, or that positive results will occur immediately upon becoming an actual client. It is imperative that the prospect understand that in order to avoid negative consequences or to gain positive benefits, they must become a client as soon as possible.

In order to do this, use the active voice. Avoid weak language or passive voice. Create a sensation of momentum as you carry them through the sales letter. Ask them leading questions. Are they safe without the protection offered by your product? Can they afford to lose the business that the product you offer will bring them?

By doing this, you will incite a response in your audience and motivate them to move quickly towards becoming a buyer.

6.    Grab your reader’s attention.

Today’s reader has an attention span measured in seconds. You have only a few lines of copy to grab their attention and entice them to continue reading. You must create an effective opening if you wish to convert any potential clients into actual clients. In order to do this, use powerful, creative openings that convey your meaning in a compact, attention grabbing manner.

Think of the articles you read first when perusing the newspaper or reading online news websites. What typically grabs your attention? The outrageous, the funny, the witty, or the engaging headline does. What do you skip? The cliché, the mundane, the boring.

Emulate these attention grabbing headlines and use the same principles in the opening of your sales letter. You want to compel the reader in order to ensure that they will continue through to the end of the letter. By doing this, you will fully engage your audience and have a higher conversion ratio.

Tie this into the knowledge you have gained of what your product offers and what your prospective client wants. This is a good point to really hit on the tactics you will be using. Are you going to motivate through fear? The use a headline that touches on the extreme negative that may occur if a prospective client does not take action. Do you want to motivate through a desire to be the best? Then use a headline that screams quality and dominance. Look at what your competition is doing and emulate what works while trying to give your sales letter a unique spin. You must set yourself apart from the competition within the first few lines.

7.    Persuade the client.

Once you have hooked your reader and fully piqued their interest, you must then give them information that leads them to the conclusion you desire. Falling back on your knowledge of the product and which aspects of it will appeal to your target audience, formulate a strong argument in favor of becoming a buyer.

Stay within the theme of the tactic you have chosen. Are you attempting to motivate through negative emotions? Then use examples of what will happen without the product. Are you trying to motivate the client through positive emotions? List examples of what will happen with the product and how it will create a positive impact on the prospect’s life or business. Are you trying to motivate them through a comparison analysis? Use this section to build your case by showing the numerous ways your product is superior to others of its kind.

This is where you will provide the meat of your argument. Typically, this is the easiest part of a sales letter as it consists primarily of facts and highlights. Bullet points work very well for this section as they communicate key points in the most condensed fashion possible. If this were an essay, this would be the middle 5 paragraphs. Your duty is to condense all of this information to only the most compelling points of interest.

Another aspect of this portion of the sales letter is overcoming objections that a prospective client may have. Think about what objections a potential client may have to your product. If you were reading this sales letter, what would you think about? What would stop you from making the purchase? Address these issues in the body of the sales letter but make them appear as positives, not explanations for negatives. Build them into the body of the sales letter naturally, following the point at which the objection would take place. For example, if they were to balk at the price, and the firm you are writing for offers a payment plan, state the details of that option immediately after or before the price. If a service is contractual, state that the customer has the assurance of working within the protection of a legal contract and that services will be rendered for the term specified.

8.    Ask your reader to take action.

In this section of the sales letter, you prompt your reader to make the decision to purchase your product or to contact the firm you are writing for, for more information. Think of this as the trial close that occurs in live selling. You are preparing them to say yes either now, or at the time of your choosing.

Make the statement confidently and be bold. Can they continue to do business without your product? Won’t their life be better with your product? Now that they see that this product is necessary for their business or life, shouldn’t they purchase it now? Do not leave room for doubt or any gaps in your sales letter.

This is where you conclude the sales letter and hit the reader with the crescendo of your carefully planned tactics. By drawing on all of the elements of the sales letter and your knowledge of the product and the client, you must construct a powerful and convincing closing statement. The function of this is to motivate the potential client to bridge the gap from thought to action. It should be the only logical conclusion to the story you have built throughout the sales letter. The reader should find themselves nodding in agreement with the morale of this story, if you have done your job well.

While this section does not necessarily require as much creativity as the opening does, it should end on a memorable note for the reader. If you can make a bold, direct statement, but do so in a clever way, then all the better as it will stick out in the potential buyer’s mind. Most importantly though, you must close with an implied need for immediate and decisive action in your reader.

9.    Establish credibility.

You must leave your reader with a sense of both your professionalism as well as your expertise. They must feel that you are an authority on the topic in question. In order to accomplish this, the sales letter must be free of spelling or grammatical errors. This may sound painfully obvious, but it is also a painful fact that often times, sales letters go out with such errors. These instantly destroy credibility. Closely edit the sales letter after finishing it. Have someone else edit it if needs be. A second pair of eyes will often catch mistakes that you miss.

Present any bona fides that you or the firm you represent may possess. For example, endorsement by a regulating body such as the American Dental Association for a dentist, or a sterling record with the Better Business Bureau for a small business. Many companies include their date of founding for good reason; a company that has been in business for a long period of time must be doing something correctly. If the members of the business possess certain accreditations such as advanced degrees, or specialized training, be sure to mention them. It is points such as this that you want to impress upon your reader to edify the company you represent as well as the product you are selling.

10.    K.I.S.S.

K.I.S.S. is an acronym from the Second World War. It stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. It was a design philosophy used by American engineers as they created the tools to be used by American soldiers. It worked then, and it most assuredly works for the creation of an effective sales letter. Do not confuse your reader with too many facts or figures, technical jargon, excessive verbiage, or repetition. Be precise and concise. Convey your message in the simplest and briefest form possible and you will dramatically increase the percentage of prospective clients that finish the letter.  Brevity is always superior to long windedness with a sales letter. If you can effectively communicate the same message in half the words, you have improved your sales letter considerably.

In order to do this, eliminate all repetition unless you deem it to be imperative to hammer home a particular point. Eliminate all technical jargon unless it is a part of your tactic to appeal to a certain target audience. Use bullet points to list key features as opposed to a paragraph.  Cut out all soft language. Not only is this poor writing in general, but it also clutters the sales letter.

In writing a sales letter you are asking for a potential client to give you some of their most precious resource: their time. Make sure that you provide them with something worthy of that investment and you will gain new business.

By following these ten steps, you will be creating a letter that will maximize the conversion ratio of your readers from potential clients to actual clients. Marketing is expensive and it is your obligation as author of the sales letter to help maximize each dollar spent. By targeting your audience with benefits of the product specific to them, presenting your argument in a well structured and concise manner with a carefully orchestrated theme, you will elicit a response from your readers. Now go out and implement these lessons to more effectively create business for yourself or the firm you represent.