Sales letters are an often overlooked lead generation tool but they are very powerful when selling to a niche market.

This has worked well for me and many of my clients. I think it will work well for you too.

Not surprisingly, sales letters are just one part of an overall marketing system. If you’d like me to work with you on implementing a client attraction system that works 24/7/365 the information here will be of interest.

Hi Mark,
I’m confused. How long should a sales letter be?
How about for a lead-generation email? Thanks-Tim Long

My reply:

The first thing to keep in mind is that length is secondary to content. If you bore your readers, two sentences can be too long. However there are some general guidelines to keep in mind.

First about sales letters…If you’re writing in the B2C market (business to consumer) there is truth to the adage ” The more you tell, the more you sell.” As direct marketers and top copywriters Dan Kennedy, Clayton Makepeace and Denny Hatch all point out, a 2-page sales letter out-performs a 1-page letter, a 4-page letter gets a better response than a 2 page.

Where’s the top? I honestly don’t know. In theory a book should outperform a letter and a
l-o-n-g book should do better than a short one. But keeping reality in mind, if you’re marketing to consumers, don’t worry about length. I once wrote two sales letters for a fitness studio. One was 4 pages, the other 8. The longer sales letter did in fact pull a greater number of leads by a factor of 3.

However in b2b marketing it’s a bit of different story. My opinion is that length does matter. In order to get through the various screeners and anti-promotional mindsets, our sales letters need to look very much like business correspondence. The copy should convey the tone of easy familiarity from one executive to another.

Length? I’d keep it to no more than 2 pages.

With emails, I would as a general rule keep them short and link the rest of the copy to your website. (As I’ve done here.) That’s one of the things I really love about WordPress sites. They enable you to add blog pages with the content that you “tease” in your emails.

Hope that helps. I’m interested in what others think so let me know.

Thanks
Mark

Not surprisingly, the purpose of the second sentence is to get the reader to read the second paragraph. If we can get the reader to read the second paragraph then we have a good chance that they’ll go down the entire slippery slope of readership and read the entire letter.

If the focus of the first sentence is to raise a potential problem that the reader may be facing, the goal of the second sentence is to expand on that problem. There are a couple of ways we can do this.

The first is to focus on the reasons why the problem occurs. In some instances the problem that you’re communicating is well understood. It’s been around for a long time and everyone acknowledges it’s an issue. Thus simply stating that you too understand the problem, won’t earn you much credibility in the eye of the reader.

What will enhance your credibility is briefly communicating why the problem exists. Now I realize that every company is unique, and it’s impossible to communicate the exact reasons for why a problem exists with anything close to 100% accuracy. However, if you’re marketing to a specific niche (which you should be) then there are going to be some common reasons that are shared across companies within a particular group.

By communicating the reasons for why the problem exists, you will demonstrate that your understanding of the issues are deep rather than superficial. An approach I use is the following:

Although the problem is well understood, the underlying issues are often not so readily apparent. For example in many cases we find that the key contributors to this problem include: (A, B, C)

When you create the three bullet points make sure you keep them short and concise. Remember that at this point in the relationship building process what we are tying to do is to raise enough interest so that the reader will do what we want them to do once they have finished reading the letter.

In other situations the challenge may be that the problem you raised in the opening sentence just isn’t seen as “all that big a deal”. If that’s the situation, then the second sentence needs to focus on why this issue is important. The way I do that is by communicating what is likely to occur if the problem isn’t addressed. The key at this stage is to strike the right balance. You want to raise real consequences of not addressing the problem, while not going overboard and sounding like Chicken Little.

I like to use a bullet point approach for listing the consequences. The bullet points can be set up with a simple statement such as; Unfortunately, the consequences of not addressing this issue can include…

If we’ve done our work correctly, at this point we’ve got our reader’s attention. This is the point when we want to shift the focus of the content to What Do We Want To Reader To Do When They Finish Reading The Letter? This is where we make the reader a very compelling and specific offer, which is designed to move the relationship building process to the next step.

However, expanding one’s circle of senior level relationships is a challenge for many consultants. Cold calling, attending networking meetings and industry conferences tend to be either a) unpleasant or b) immensely time consuming. So, what are the other options available to consultants who feel that they have lapped the track with their existing circle of contacts?

For the consultants that we work with, we’ve found the most effective method for gaining initial traction is a one-page letter. However, the difference between whether the letter gets through the screener, actually gets read and acted upon, naturally depends upon how it is written. And it all starts with the first sentence.

There’s an old saying in copywriting that the purpose of the first sentence is simply to get the reader to read the second sentence. And that’s basically the truth. You either hook the reader with your opening sentence, or your letter gets pitched. It’s that simple.

However, all opening hooks are not the same. First, we need to consider who the reader is. Crafting a compelling letter introducing our consulting services to a C-Level executive is a very different challenge than marketing a consumer product to a homeowner. Thus the opening sentence must “grab” the reader, but do so in a manner that doesn’t scream “This is a sales letter and I want you to buy my services!”

The key to getting immediate attention is 1) communicating that you specialize in their industry and 2) understand a particular problem this group faces. Why are these crucial?

First, everyone thinks their problems are unique. This isn’t necessarily true, but from a marketing perspective it’s important that we accept this perception. Thus, the more we communicate that we “play in their sandbox” the greater the likelihood is that our entire letter will get read.

Communicating a problem that the reader faces requires that we raise a specific, rather than obviously generic, challenge. Simple saying “We know you’re concerned about cost reduction” is just too basic. You need to fly the plane at a lower level. What exactly does “cost reduction” mean to a bank? To a manufacturer? To an educational institution? To your specific audience? That’s what you want to communicate.

So this is quite an objective for the opening sentence. You need to demonstrate that you specialize in the reader’s industry and show that you understand an issue of substance and importance. Let me share with you an example of an opening sentence that has proven to be extremely successful for my clients. The format is as follows:

I know from speaking with other (people similar to the person you are writing to) that many of them are concerned about (a specific problem).

For example:

I know from speaking with other banking executives that training bank personnel to cross-sell financial services is an on-going challenge.

Note that I didn’t say that “more business” was the challenge. Rather I focused on the issue of “cross-selling”, which is a specific challenge for executives in retail banking. Thus I begin to build immediate credibility for myself as someone who truly understands the issues bankers face.

This lesson applies to any group that you are writing to. You want your reader to see a reflection of themselves in the message you are communicating.

Now suppose, despite all of your efforts, what you come up with as an issue still sounds pretty obvious. That’s not necessarily a problem as long as you acknowledge the obviousness and don’t try to package it as some sort of unique insight.

Let me give you an example of a letter I wrote for my own practice (that you can easily adapt to your business) which I stated a generic problem but still got readers to keep reading by adding a second sentence.

“I know from speaking with other partners of management consulting firms that new business development is an ongoing challenge. And while this may appear to be a blinding grasp of the obvious, what is less apparent is what the most successful firms are actually doing to address this challenge.”

I tested this letter with, and without the second sentence, to two mailing lists of consulting firms. The first letter drew a minimal response of .5%. The second letter, which included the second sentence, drew 3.7%, which in the world of direct response is a huge difference.

Naturally there is more to writing a compelling marketing letter that gets read and acted on than just the opening sentence. In future articles I will share with you how to continue to build initial credibility and create a call to action that motivates readers to take the next step in the relationship building process.