Bizsuccess

Sales letters, sent via e-mail or snail mail, are an effective and inexpensive way to get your message out. Even if your letter goes out to thousands of people, it can give the feel of a personal communication — IF you write it in a direct and conversational tone. To get your creative juices flowing, here are five tried and true formulas that can work for either e-mail or printed letters.

1. TELL A STORY – FROM EITHER YOUR POINT OF VIEW OR A CUSTOMER’S.

‘When I started my own business, I was very nervous about keeping my books. I’m not a numbers person and wanted nothing to do with it! Then I purchased ‘EZ-CASH-BOOKS’ software. Instantly, all my accounting ‘dirty work’ disappeared. I gained instant peace of mind, and now I can focus on my real job –finding and keeping customers! Copy written in a story format has great appeal. By telling a short story that relates to the reader’s situation, you create empathy with her. People are also familiar with stories and enjoy hearing them (they appear daily in newspapers, magazines, TV, etc.). If your letter happens to be a long one, you can draw out your story for added suspense, saving the outcome for the end. (However, as we’ll mention later, it’s safest to send a short letter.)

2. ASK QUESTIONS.

‘Have you ever stared at yourself in the mirror and wanted to cry? If we told you we have a product guaranteed to help you lose weight while you sleep, would you be interested? And what if we told you this product sells for less than $30?’ Basic psychology dictates that when you ask a question, the reader feels compelled to answer it. You’re involving them immediately in the issue at hand. Many effective sales letters ask a series of questions that are all likely answered with a ‘yes’ from the reader. More »

Give your business a boost in a slow market

A slow market can be especially tough on small businesses, as they are often run on a shoestring budget which leaves very little room for the cost cutting and expense reductions that corporations implement in times like these. Whether it’s real estate or certain sectors within the retail industry, there are always ups and downs in various industries.

Since you don’t have a lot of room to cut costs for your business, the only other way to boost bottom line profits is to increase revenue. With that in mind, here are three things you can do today to shake up your business and stir up some sales if you find yourself in a slowing market.

Offer a Deal – Discounting is not a long term strategy for success, unless you’re the size of Wal-Mart and can afford to make small margins by moving huge volumes of product. However, when you need to shake things up, a temporary discount to the price of your product may be the ticket. It should help to convince those people who are sitting on the fence to pull out their wallets and make the purchase. Consumers are more price sensitive these days, as evidenced by the continuing success of Wal-Mart and other big box retail stores offering low prices. A modest discount that you can live with could be a great tonic to help you grow your sales numbers. Also, remember that plenty of good things come from sales, including testimonials, positive word of mouth, and more. As the old small business saying goes, “activity breeds activity”. More »

Have you ever been on the wrong end of a negotiation? You closed the business only to discover the more business you write the more money you lose! In other words, you didn’t negotiate price, terms and agreements to create a true win-win outcome. It’s important to be equipped with good consultative skills as well as good negotiating skills. Here are three skills to add to your sales tool belt.

1. Clearly identify your ideal client.
Neil Rackham, author of “Rethinking the Sales Force,” does a great job of explaining the impact of the information age on business. He tells how the information age is creating two distinct type of buyers: the transactional buyer and the value buyer.

The transactional buyer is interested in one thing and one thing only….price. This buyer doesn’t care about your expertise or relationships. They believe they can find the same expertise on the internet and the vendor (YOU) can be easily replaced.

The value buyer still values expertise, business relationships, and the shortcuts both those areas bring. They are still willing to pay for value and recognize the tangibles and intangibles which accompany that business model.

Know who you want to serve and who you best serve. If you are a value solution provider calling on a transactional buyer, don’t bother negotiating unless you’re ready to be the low priced provider. More »

Frequently clients will ask me, “How can you write effective sales letters so FAST?”

One of my clients even shared with me how much time he was spending, hunched over his keyboard, trying to create the “perfect” winning sales letter.

A long time ago, my personal mentor and good trusted friend told me a secret that I have used ever since to write sales letters and any other type of business (or personal) letter. I shared this tip with my client and he’s spending much less time agonizing over his sales letters now.

The “secret” is a little copywriting trick known by the acronym: AIDA. No, I’m not talking about some Italian opera – AIDA stands for: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action, the 4 components every good letter must have.

Here’s how it works: More »

Since words and meaning conflict, and since one unit of tone is more convincing than, six hundred units of words, it is wise to make use of tones when working on making a sales pitch. More »

It’s no secret that in today’s world, on-line success depends in large part on how much traffic you drive to your website. The amount of traffic you get depends on your search engine optimization. When your site is primed for search engine optimization (SEO), you get tons of traffic coming to you for free. More »

Reaching out to prospective customers and getting results can be especially tricky.  Check out the Greatest Sales Letters, a PDF document containing examples of highly effective sales letters that will help you see better results with yours. More »

You’ve probably heard the story that it took Thomas Edison 1,000 tires before he invented the light bulb. But did you know that, 12 publishers rejected J.K Rowling’s first Harry Potter book before an obscure publishing house finally picked it up? That Decca Records turned down the Beatles? More »

Any veteran in business can tell you a story about the one that got away. Veterans who are successful in business today learned valuable lessons from those situations and, hopefully, never repeated them. More »