Notes taken from the notes taken from the Robert Collier Letter Book 20080808
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Study your reader. Find out what interests him. Then study your proposition to see how it can be made to tie into that interest.
find one thing your prospect is interested in and make that your point of contact, rather than rush in and try to tell him something about your proposition, your goods, your interest.
It may have everything else, but if it lacks that faculty of arousing the right feeling, you might as well throw it away. It will never make you money.
Appeal to the reason, by all means. Give people a logical excuse for buying that they can tell to their friends and use to salve their own consciences. But if you want to sell goods, if you want action of any kind, base your real urge upon some primary emotion!
Lead him gently from one point of interest to another, with word pictures so clear, so simple, that he can almost see the things you are offering him.
Getting your readers attention is your first job. That done, your next job is to get your idea across, to make him see it as you see it.
So few letter-writers have that knack of visualizing a proposition - of painting it in words so the reader can see it as they see it.
Make him want the thing you are offering more than the money or trouble it costs him.
They revel in emotion at any and all times. So give them a thrill! If you want to describe your mustard, weave it into a story.
Show what it will do for the reader, what it will add to his prestige, to his power, to his comfort, to the well-being of those he loves.
Six prime motives of human action: love, gain, duty, pride, self-indulgence, and self-preservation. Frequently they are so mixed together that it is hard to tell which to work on more strongly. The more motives you can appeal to, of course, the more successful you will be.
Supply the impulse that will make it EASIER for him to go FORWARD than to stand still or draw back.
Don't decide on the main proposition now. Instead put his mind to work on some minor point - and you will find that a favorable decision on it will, in 3 case out of 4, carry the major proposition along with it!
If it does not tell him what to do, if it does not provide a penalty for his not doing it, your prospect will slip away from you like a fish off the hook.
There is one reason why anyone ever reads a letter you send him. He expects a reward. That is they key to holding his interest. All through your letter you keep leading him on, constantly feeding his interest, but always holding something back for the climax.
2 reasons for doing as you say:
1. You made him want it so badly he can't help it
2. You aroused the fear that he will lose something worthwhile if he doesn't do it
Make your reader feel that this is his last chance - keep your penalty dangling before his minds eye, the money-saving lost, the opportunity missed. Put into your close the fear of consequences.
It is essential that you put a hook into that last paragraph.
Every good letter contains six essential elements:
1. The opening - gets the readers attention
2. Description or explanation - word pictures
3. Motive or reason why - create a longing
4. Proof or guarantee
5. Snapper or penalty (hook) - get immediate action by threatening loss of money, prestige, opportunity
6. Close - tell what to do, how to do it
We gave him a reason why he must order at once, or lose a really worthwhile premium that wold otherwise be his free. In short, we aimed first at making the reader want the stories for themselves alone. When we felt we had succeeded in that, we gave him as many excuses for buying them as we could think of, and a real reason why he must do it right away. And lastly, we made it easy.
We seldom try to sell merchandise. We sell ideas. The wording counts for little. It is the way you adapt the idea back of the letter that counts. Words are empty sounds. It is the images back of them that counts!
It is merely a matter of finding the primal human motive your book appeals to - be it love or gain or fear or ambition -- and then directing your appeal at that motive.
If you can tie in with twhat people are thinking about and interested in, you can sell anything
You need a convincing reason why you can make a lower price than your competitors - mere reductions are not enough.
If you offer one article you will get twice as many orders as if you offered a choice of two or more articles!
In selling by mail the customer who hesitates is lost to you. I have seldom known that rule to fail.
Many times the most successful pieces were those on which we sold the quality or comfort or usefulness of the product and then brought in the money-saving as an after-thought.
We tried the device of offering the slippers as a free premium, if customers would send for and try out the bath robe! You would be surprised how beautifully it worked. those 10,000 robes melted away like snow before the summer sun!
We put into that first draft everything that we should want in the product if we were buying it. Then - after we had our mental picture of the ideal product from our point of view as a user - we took the product itself, studied it, and determined how it compared with our ideal.
While most people lack the courage for real leadership, few there are who do not long to be looked up to, as being a bit above their fellows. We all like to feel important, Anything that raises our ego, that makes us feel more necessary to the general scheme of things, is sure to please us.
As to the motives to appeal when you have won the readers attention, by far the strongest, in our experience, is Vanity. Not the vanity that buys cosmetics, but that unconscience vanity which makes a man want to feel important in his own eyes and makes him strut mentally. This appeal needs to be subtly used, but when used properly, it si the strongest we know.
Next to vanity is the premium or "Gift" idea - starting your letter with the gift of some unimportant article to lead your reader on to the buying of your real product.
One of the strongest traits in human nature is the desire to be somebody, to feel important, to be necessary to the community and those around us. This harmless strain of vanity is in all of us.
The only difference between an expensive product and one of ordinary price is usually one of degree. They look alike, made of same material, do the same things. The idfference is in the degree of pleasure or stisfaction they will bring. And this is largely in the mind of the buyer.
So your job is to build a picture in his minds eye of what he will get from your product or service. Build it with bricks he can handle, i.e., with words and mental images that are familiar to him.
Do not make the mistake of trying to stress in your letter all the points of your pdouct. You can list them in a separate folder and make your letter the stronger for it. But find the one point on which your sale is likely to hang and build your letter around it. Let that be the focal point of your mental image, your picture, and let every word in it be a brush stroke that adds clearness and power to that one focal point.
If you set a time limit say positively that no orders will be accepted beyond that date. If you announce a raise in price tell them that there will be no last minute concessions. Be definite -- and be positive! You will lose a few last minute orders, but you will gain ten times the number in those who are impelled to act the moment they read the letter -- while the order card is in their hands -- for fear if they lay it down they will delay and be too late.
Always remember that the point which sells your customer is not what your product is -- but what it will do for him!
"What do they want ~ " What is the bait that will attract your fish and make them bite? Find that -- and you will be as successful in bringing back the orders as any angler can be with a properly baited hook in bringing in the fish.