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    The Ultimate Sales Letter 4Th Edition: Attract New Customers. Boost your Sales.
    The Ultimate Sales Letter 4Th Edition: Attract New Customers. Boost your Sales.
    The Ultimate Sales Letter 4Th Edition: Attract New Customers. Boost your Sales.
    Ebook234 pages3 hours

    The Ultimate Sales Letter 4Th Edition: Attract New Customers. Boost your Sales.

    By Dan S. Kennedy

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Write Well to Sell Big!

    In the age of e-mail and instant communication, great sales copy is indispensable to closing a deal. But too many sales letters end up in the junk file or the wastebasket. In this new edition of his top-selling book, author Dan Kennedy explains why some sales letters work and most don't. And he shows how to write copy that any business can use.

    Among other things, he provides:
    • Completely updated text and examples
    • Great headline formulas
    • New exercises to spark creativity
    • The best way to use graphics

    Kennedy is the most successful, highly paid direct-response copywriter in the country. In this book, he shares his step-by-step formula so everyone can write letters that will nail the sale.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateJan 31, 2011
    ISBN9781440511905
    Author

    Dan S. Kennedy

    Dan S. Kennedy is the provocative, truth-telling author of thirteen business books total; a serial, successful, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; trusted marketing advisor, consultant, and coach to hundreds of private entrepreneurial clients; and he influences well over one million independent business owners annually through his newsletters, tele-coaching programs, local Chapters, and Kennedy Study Groups meeting in over 100 cities, and a network of top niched consultants in nearly 150 different business and industry categories and professions. Dan lives in Ohio and in northern Virginia, with his wife, Carla, and their Million Dollar Dog. For more information check out his blog at DanKennedy.com/Blog.

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    Reviews for The Ultimate Sales Letter 4Th Edition

    4.5/5

    19 ratings5 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title clear, concise, and filled with techniques that can be implemented. It is considered amazing, inspiring, and authoritative. The book provides a detailed step-by-step system to write a great sales message, making it valuable for both beginners and experienced copywriters. Many readers have learned a lot from the wisdom shared in this book and highly recommend it.

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Clear and concise. Filled with techniques one can implement. A definite read for any copywriter, marketer or a business owner.
    • 5/5
      Amazing, inspiring, authoritative. Will be reading this book 100 times more in the future.
    • 5/5
      A very detailed step by step system to write a great sales message! No matter if you have never wrote a single word or you are an experienced copywriter, this book will help you a lot!

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Dan's book has been recommended to me a number of times from different people. It's a very easy book to read, packed with value. I have learned so much from his wisdom and hope you do too.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I tried this and it really a great book. I've learn more on how to attract costumers and boost my sales. Now, I became successful thanks to this book and for this part time job that I did.
      trading-platform-online.com/comments

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    The Ultimate Sales Letter 4Th Edition - Dan S. Kennedy

    The Kennedy System

    Synonyms for System: methodology, process, procedure, approach, practice, framework, modus operandi, regimen, formula, routine. Writing copy that sells is not a creative act so much as it is mechanical process, adhering to formulas, and assembling essential component parts within a reliable framework.

    Chapter 1

    The Clay with Which to Mold

    The first three steps are about getting the clay onto the worktable where we will then mold and make our masterpieces. The idea of writing a sales letter is actually something of a false idea. It suggests sitting down with a pristine, blank sheet of paper and conjuring words. In actuality, a truer description is assembling a sales letter. To do that, we need some things to assemble.

    STEP 1: Get Into the Customer

    An old adage says that you can't understand someone until you've walked a mile in his shoes.

    It's a good adage. We entrepreneurs, for instance, would be much better off if each of our elected representatives had to spend a couple of weeks every year running a small business, struggling to meet a payroll, and filling out a slew of government forms. The people trying to work their way out of the slums would be much better off if each of our elected officials had to go live with them for a week or two every year. And our farmers would get some of their problems solved if each of those same officials had to spend a week every year working on a farm. A number of well-run companies require their top executives to take customer complaint calls periodically, open and read mail from customers, even get out into the stores and deal with customers face to face.

    MORE

    small businesses

    are using direct mail

    to attract new clients,

    customers, or patients —

    up to 18 percent year to year

    (2010 from 2009).

    (Source: 2010 U.S. Small Business Survey reported in delivermagazine.com)

    The goal is understanding. To persuade someone, to motivate someone, to sell someone, you really need to understand that person.

    How easy is it to miss? I wrote a TV infomercial script (essentially, a sales letter that comes to life) selling a home-mortgage-related product. The script called for the spokesperson to walk into a living room, saying, Here, in a typical American home … The producer filmed this line with the spokesperson stepping into a white-carpeted room with a grand piano as its centerpiece! Out of touch, out of touch! Admittedly, most marketers are never that far out of touch with their customers or prospects, but make a mental note: the more in touch you are, the more probable your success. In my Copywriting Mastery Seminar (which hundreds of people paid $2,000.00 to attend), I provide a special checklist of smart questions to ask about your customers and prospects. (My Copywriting Seminar in a Box and other resources for copywriters can be found at www.dankennedy.com.) That check-list is reprinted here, as a very valuable bonus with this book.

    My 10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions

    What keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up their esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling?

    What are they afraid of?

    What are they angry about? Who are they angry at?

    What are their top three daily frustrations?

    What trends are occurring and will occur in their businesses or lives?

    What do they secretly, ardently desire most?

    Is there a built-in bias to the way they make decisions? (Example: engineers = exceptionally analytical)

    Do they have their own language?

    Who else is selling something similar to their product, and how?

    Who else has tried selling them something similar, and how has that effort failed?

    So, Step 1 in our system is to analyze thoroughly, understand, and connect with the customer.

    In some cases, you may have a lot of demographic and statistical data about your customers or prospects available from your own records or from the vendors of the mailing lists you are using. You might (and probably should) know the ages, incomes, hobbies, and political affiliations of the people you're writing to — even what magazines they read regularly. Hopefully, you can even get beyond this data and gain a feeling for these people. If you have none of this, if you have nothing but zip codes, I'd suggest getting into your car and driving slowly, several times, on different days, through the neighborhood with one of those zip codes, to try to get a feel for those people. Or, if you're marketing to businesspeople, attend their meetings, read their trade journals.

    I've spent thirty years working with the visualization techniques developed by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of the 30-million-copy best-seller Psycho-Cybernetics, and I use those techniques — like Theater in Your Mind — to visualize my letter's recipients as living, breathing, thinking, feeling, walking, talking human beings. I visualize their day's experience. How did it start out? What did they do when they first arrived at the office? Do they get their mail presorted? Opened? From an in basket? Hand-delivered? When do they get it? Where will they stand or sit when going through it? At that time, what else are they thinking about? Preoccupied with? What do they worry about, complain about, secretly wish for, enjoy? Through this stretch of my own imagination, I try to become one with the recipients of my letter, so I can anticipate their thoughts and reactions. If you don't have enough information and experience to do this, you must get it! I try to accept assignments to write sales letters only to types of prospects I know well. But given an assignment aimed at people I didn't understand, I'd go get that understanding.

    Over the years, I've written hundreds of sales letters to real-estate agents. My clients have included the best-known sales trainers, seminar speakers, and marketing advisors to the real-estate profession. I am not and have never been in the real-estate business. When I first had to write a series of letters to real-estate agents, I knew nothing about their business. What did I do? I went to the public library and read several years' back issues of the trade journals that real-estate agents subscribe to and read. One of the largest real-estate companies had its convention in my city, so I went and hung out in the hotel lobby and bars and eavesdropped on conversations. I took a real-estate agent to lunch and pumped him for information. I got myself to the point where I could visualize myself as a real-estate agent and speak the language of a real-estate agent.

    Once you've begun that process of identification, you'll be in a good position to determine what the recipient of your letter wants. Write these items down in order of priority.

    What Is Most Important to Your Reader?

    There is a classic sales legend about the hotshot salesman pitching a new home-heating system to a little old lady. He told her everything there was to tell about BTUs, construction, warranties, service, and so on. When he finally shut up, she said, I have just one question — will this thing keep a little old lady warm?

    The mistake is even easier to make in crafting a sales letter, because there's no possibility of corrective feedback from customers during the presentation. That's why you must determine accurately, in advance, what their priorities are. And you must address their priorities, not yours.

    I was once asked to write a corporate fundraising letter for the Arthritis Foundation's annual telethon. In examining sample letters other nonprofit organizations sent to corporate donors, I noticed that they all had the same failing in common: they talked at great length about their own priorities — what they needed the money for, how it would be used, etc. — but they hardly addressed the donor's priorities at all. So I visualized myself as the business owner or executive being banged at by all these worthy charities' pleas and asked myself, If I were to give, what would be important to me? I came up with this

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