Good Direct Mail Sales Letters Are Like Good Salespeople

Good Direct Mail Sales Letters Are Like Good Salespeople

Want to improve your sales letters? Compare them with newspaper classified ads for salespeople. What employers look for in a salesperson, you should look for in a sales letter.

1. Self-starter
The best salespeople require the least amount of supervision. They are self-motivated. Your sales letter needs to work on its own. If you want your prospect to buy through the mail, your sales letter must give every benefit, feature, selling promise, proof and guarantee needed to close the sale.

2. Experience necessary
Top sales people learn from their mistakes. So should your sales letters. The one you are about to mail should have been tested to make sure your list, your offer, your creative and your timing are the best they can be.

3. Works well under pressure
Your prospect is busy and distracted. Your letter will likely arrive as an interruption. So make sure your letter works hard to grab the attention of your potential buyer and make your sales pitch.

4. Excellent communication skills
My wife and I dined out on her birthday a few days ago in a Chinese restaurant where our server was authentic mainland Chinese, charming, professional and incoherent. We could hardly understand her. If she made any suggestive sells at our table, we don’t know about them. Even though she was delightful. Make sure your sales letters are easy to understand.

5. Energetic
The real estate agent who helped us buy our house rises early, works hard and works late. She did for us. She will get our business again because she doesn’t quit. Your sales letters need to have a certain vitality to them that is hard to describe but comes through in the reading.

6. Excellent writing, editing, and typing skills
No typos. Enough said.

7. Proven organization skills
I sat in on a meeting once where a famous and competent sales trainer made a presentation to the account executives and the company management, trying to sell us on the idea of taking his sales training. Fifteen minutes into his pitch, he stopped and asked us if we knew where he was in his sales pitch. None of us knew. He got our business. We wanted to be as organized and methodical (and effective) as he was! In person and on paper.

8. Team player
Sometimes your sales letter will not be working on its own. If your letter is designed to generate a lead and not make a sale, for example, it likely has other team players (print advertising, telemarketing, pay-per-click advertising) that it must work with to reach quota. Make sure your sales letter matches the tone and strategy of your other marketing team players.

9. Excellent customer service skills
I think you’ll agree that sales letters are a one-way medium, but you can write them to sound more like a conversation, can’t you? The more that your letters sound warm, human and real (just like a good sales person), the better.

10. Serious candidates only need apply
Have you heard the one about the Englishman, the Irishman and the Scotsman who go on a sales call? Neither have I.

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