Month after month he asked these questions of pioneers and immigrants. He wanted their viewpoint, the real motive that drove them westward. Then he took in a partner, turned the paper over to him and devoted his time to the real estate business. Today he is at the head of a great land company and through his letters and his advertising matter he has sold hundreds of thousands of acres to people who have never seen the land. But he tells them the things they want to know; he uses the arguments that "get under the skin."
He spent years in preparing to write his letters and bought and sold land with prospects "face to face" long before he attempted to deal with them by letter. He talked and thought and studied for months before he dipped his pen into ink.
Now before he starts a letter, he calls to mind someone to whom he has sold a similar tract in the past; he remembers how each argument was received; what appeals struck home and then, in his letter, he talks to that man just as earnestly as if his future happiness depended upon making the one sale.
The preparation to write the letter should be two-fold: knowing your product or proposition and knowing the man you want to reach. You have got to see the proposition through the eyes of your prospect.
The printer sold his ink dryer because he looked at it from the angle of the buyer and later he sold real estate, but not until he covered up his own interest and presented the proposition from the viewpoint of the prospect.
Probably most successful letter writers, when they sit down to write, consciously or unconsciously run back over faces and characteristics of friends and acquaintances until they find someone who typifies the cla.s.s they desire to reach. When writing to women, one man always directs his appeal to his mother or sister; if trying to interest young men he turns his mind back to his own early desires and ambitions.
Visualize your prospect. Fix firmly in your mind some one who represents the cla.s.s you are trying to reach; forget that there is any other prospect in the whole world; concentrate your attention and selling talk on this one individual.
"If you are going to write letters that pull," says one successful correspondent, "you have got to be a regular spiritualist in order to materialize the person to whom you are writing; bring him into your office and talk to him face to face."
"The first firm I ever worked for," he relates, "was Andrew Campbell & Son. The senior Campbell was a conservative old Scotchman who had made a success in business by going cautiously and thoroughly into everything he took up. The only thing that would appeal to him would be a proposition that could be presented logically and with the strongest kind of arguments to back it up. The son, on the other hand, was thoroughly American; ready to take a chance, inclined to plunge and try out a new proposition because it was new or unique; the novelty of a thing appealed to him and he was interested because it was out of the ordinary.
"Whenever I have an important letter to write, I keep these two men in mind and I center all my efforts to convince them; using practical, commonsense arguments to convince the father, and enough snappy "try-it-for-yourself" talk to win the young man."
According to this correspondent, every firm in a measure represents these two forces, conservative and radical, and the strongest letter is the one that makes an appeal to both elements.
A young man who had made a success in selling books by mail was offered double the salary to take charge of the publicity department of a mail-order clothing house. He agreed to accept--two months later. Reluctantly the firm consented.
The firm saw or heard nothing from him until he reported for work.
He had been shrewd enough not to make the mistake of the printer who tried to sell land and so he went to a small town in northern Iowa where a relative owned a clothing store and started in as a clerk.
After a month he jumped to another store in southern Minnesota. At each place--typical country towns--he studied the trade and when not waiting on customers busied himself near some other clerk so he could hear the conversation, find out the things the farmers and small town men looked for in clothes and learn the talking points that actually sell the goods.
This man who had a position paying $6,000 a year waiting for him spent two months at $9 a week preparing to write. A more conceited chap would have called it a waste of time, but this man thought that he could well afford to spend eight weeks and sacrifice nearly a thousand dollars learning to write letters and advertis.e.m.e.nts that would sell clothes by mail.
At the end of the year he was given a raise that more than made up his loss. Nor is he content, for every year he spends a few weeks behind the counter in some small town, getting the viewpoint of the people with whom he deals, finding a point of contact, getting local color and becoming familiar with the manner of speech and the arguments that will get orders.
When he sits down to write a letter or an advertis.e.m.e.nt he has a vivid mental picture of the man he wants to interest; he knows that man"s process of thinking, the thing that appeals to him, the arguments that will reach right down to his pocket-book.
A man who sells automatic scales to grocers keeps before him the image of a small dealer in his home town. The merchant had fallen into the rut, the dust was getting thicker on his dingy counters and trade was slipping away to more modern stores.
"Mother used to send me on errands to that store when I was a boy,"
relates the correspondent, "and I had been in touch with it for twenty years. I knew the local conditions; the growth of compet.i.tion that was grinding out the dealer"s life.
"I determined to sell him and every week he received a letter from the house--he did not know of my connection with it--and each letter dealt with some particular problem that I knew he had to face. I kept this up for six months without calling forth a response of any kind; but after the twenty-sixth letter had gone out, the manager came in one day with an order--and the cash accompanied it. The dealer admitted that it was the first time he had ever bought anything of the kind by mail. But I knew _his_ problems, and I connected them up with our scales in such a way that he _had_ to buy.
"Those twenty-six letters form the basis for all my selling arguments, for in every town in the country there are merchants in this same rut, facing the same compet.i.tion, and they can be reached only by connecting their problems with our scales."
No matter what your line may be, you have got to use some such method if you are going to make your letters pull the orders.
Materialize your prospect; overcome every objection and connect _their_ problems with _your_ products.
When you sit down to your desk to write a letter, how do you get into the right mood? Some, like mediums, actually work themselves into a sort of trance before starting to write. One man insists that he writes good letters only when he gets mad--which is his way of generating nervous energy.
Others go about it very methodically and chart out the letter, point by point. They a.n.a.lyze the proposition and out of all the possible arguments and appeals, carefully select those that their experience and judgment indicate will appeal strongest to the individual whom they are addressing. On a sheet of paper one man jots down the arguments that may be used and by a process of elimination, scratches off one after another until he has left only the ones most likely to reach his prospect.
Many correspondents keep within easy reach a folder or sc.r.a.pbook of particularly inspiring letters, advertis.e.m.e.nts and other matter gathered from many sources. One man declares that no matter how dull he may feel when he reaches the office in the morning he can read over a few pages in his sc.r.a.pbook and gradually feel his mind clear; his enthusiasm begins to rise and within a half hour he is keyed up to the writing mood.
A correspondent in a large mail-order house keeps a sc.r.a.pbook of pictures--a portfolio of views of rural life and life in small towns. He subscribes to the best farm papers and clips out pictures that are typical of rural life, especially those that represent types and show activities of the farm, the furnishings of the average farm house--anything that will make clearer the environment of the men and women who buy his goods. When he sits down to write a letter he looks through this book until he finds some picture that typifies the man who needs the particular article he wants to sell and then he writes to that man, keeping the picture before him, trying to shape every sentence to impress such a person. Other correspondents are at a loss to understand the pulling power of his letters.
A sales manager in a typewriter house keeps the managers of a score of branch offices and several hundred salesmen gingered up by his weekly letters. He prepares to write these letters by walking through the factory, where he finds inspiration in the roar of machinery, the activity of production, the atmosphere of actual creative work.
There are many sources of inspiration. Study your temperament, your work and your customers to find out under what conditions your production is the easiest and greatest. It is neither necessary nor wise to write letters when energies and interest are at a low ebb, when it is comparatively easy to stimulate the lagging enthusiasm and increase your power to write letters that bring results.
How To _Begin_ A BUSINESS Letter
PART II--HOW TO WRITE THE LETTER--CHAPTER 5
_From its saluation to its signature a business letter must hold the interest of the reader or fail in its purpose. The most important sentence in it is obviously the_ FIRST _one, for upon it depends whether the reader will dip further into the letter or discard it into the waste basket_. IN THAT FIRST SENTENCE THE WRITER HAS HIS CHANCE. _If he is really capable, he will not only attract the reader"s interest in that first sentence, but put him into a receptive mood for the message that follows. Here are some sample ways of "opening" a business letter_
No matter how large your tomorrow morning"s mail, it is probable that you will glance through the first paragraph of every letter you open. If it catches your attention by reference to something in which you are interested, or by a clever allusion or a striking head line or some original style, it is probable you will read at least the next paragraph or two. But if these paragraphs do not keep up your interest the letter will be pa.s.sed by unfinished. If you fail to give the letter a full reading the writer has only himself to blame. He has not taken advantage of his opportunity to carry your interest along and develop it until he has driven his message home, point by point.
In opening the letter the importance of the salutation must not be ignored. If a form letter from some one who does not know Mr. Brown, personally, starts out "Dear Mr. Brown," he is annoyed. A man with self-respect resents familiarity from a total stranger--someone who has no interest in him except as a possible customer for his commodity.
If a clerk should address a customer in such a familiar manner it would be looked upon as an insult. Yet it is no uncommon thing to receive letters from strangers that start out with one of these salutations:
"Dear Benson:"
"My dear Mr. Benson:"
"Respected Friend:"
"Dear Brother:"
While it is desirable to get close to the reader; and you want to talk to him in a very frank manner and find a point of personal contact, this a.s.sumption of friendship with a total stranger disgusts a man before he begins your letter. You start out with a handicap that is hard to overcome, and an examination of a large number of letters using such salutations are enough to create suspicion for all; too often they introduce some questionable investment proposition or scheme that would never appeal to the hard-headed, conservative business man.
"Dear Sir" or "Gentlemen" is the accepted salutation, at least until long correspondence and cordial relations justify a more intimate greeting. The ideal opening, of course, strikes a happy medium between too great formality on the one hand and a cringing servility or undue familiarity on the other hand.
No one will dispute the statement that the reason so many selling campaigns fail is not because of a lack of merit in the propositions themselves but because they are not effectively presented.
For most business men read their letters in a receptive state of mind. The letterhead may show that the message concerns a duplicating machine and the one to whom it is addressed may feel confident in his own mind that he does not want a duplicating machine. At the same time he is willing to read the letter, for it may give him some new idea, some practical suggestion as to how such a device would be a good investment and make money for him. He is anxious to learn how the machine may be related to his particular problems. But it is not likely that he has time or sufficient interest to wade through a long letter starting out:
"We take pleasure in sending you under separate cover catalogue of our latest models of Print-Quicks, and we are sure it will prove of interest to you."
The man who has been sufficiently interested in an advertis.e.m.e.nt to send for a catalogue finds his interest cooling rapidly when he picks up a letter that starts out like this:
"We have your valued inquiry of recent date, and we take pleasure in acknowledging," and so forth.