Letter Perfect

Writing a good sales letter or email message is a skill. Like all skills, it requires education and practice. And like any skill, the better your mastery of it, the further it will take you. Most sales reps, however, never acquire this skill. But writing a good sales letter is an integral part of the sales cycle. Here’s how two sales managers and an expert consultant helped salespeople learn the skill of writing sales letters.

Tim Hodgman is the senior agent/team leader for the Holt Dimondale insurance agency in Holt, MI. He believes that a large part of the reason salespeople can’t write a good sales letter to save their lives is because of the influence of technology. He is also convinced that their lack of ability to craft good written material stems from the fact that they don’t place enough emphasis on reading.

“There are so many kids that come out of high school and college who are used to email, instant messages and thinking and writing in fragments that they can hardly speak in full sentences,” says Hodgman. “So how can we expect them to write in full sentences?”

“In my opinion, the ability to deliver top-notch sales writing stems from a commitment to read,” says Hodgman. “If you read good writing, you’ll be able to write well,” says Hodgman. “It’s like playing an instrument. The more you practice, the better you’ll be.”

Hodgman has another concern about salespeople who can’t write well.

“If salespeople can’t structure a letter or email, how are they going to structure the sales process?” asks Hodgman. “Good writing and communication are important pegs in becoming a true consultative salesperson.”

Kevin Shaw, vice president of marketing and business development for the Wieland-Daveco Corporation, a construction firm located in Lansing, MI, is a real stickler for accurate, correctly written and easily conveyed sales messages.

“Punctuation and grammar are simply not negotiable, and salespeople have to write what’s right,” says Shaw. “That means tenses need to match and paragraphs are written concisely with short sentences – no more than four or five that get to the point of what the salesperson wants from the prospect or customer.”

Hodgman agrees. “God is in the details, and salespeople need to have someone else proof their correspondence,” notes Hodgman. “A letter with a bunch of typos turns off a prospect or customer and sends the message that a salesperson doesn’t care enough about the business to spend time correcting errors.”

According to Hodgman, before salespeople can even think about writing a sales letter, they need to determine what the objective of writing one is.

“Salespeople need to have an objective and purpose for contacting a customer or prospect with a written sales message,” says Hodgman. “What is the plan, whom do you want to contact, why and when.”

“Sales letters that have endless, pointless chatter get on my nerves,” adds Shaw. “Salespeople need to get to the point early on about what the purpose of the letter is. Let me know that they will be doing something for me, asking me to buy something, sending me additional information or trying to set up an appointment within a certain finite time frame.”

If the purpose of a letter or email is based on expanding business based on a referral, Shaw feels that the referral’s name needs to be one of the first things mentioned. If it’s an email, it needs to be referred to in the subject box.

“Make sure to introduce yourself and your firm, give the purpose for the letter and tell me who the person is that said it was alright to contact me – all in the first paragraph…or even better yet, the first line,” says Shaw. “I’ve had letters and emails come to me that didn’t identify who referred them to me until the end of the message. I almost deleted them or threw them out. Sometimes I did.”

“If someone was kind enough to give you a referral, you owe it to that person to make sure that you identify them and follow up on the lead in a timely and professional manner,” notes Shaw.

Shaw also feels that there are times when a salesperson needs to have a coworker read a letter or email not so much for content but for tone.

“I was given a lead by a client for a person he thought we could work with,” says Shaw. “I called and emailed him five times and, candidly, was getting rather frustrated. I emailed him a final message, simply asking him to email me back acknowledging that he received my correspondence, so I wouldn’t let the person who gave me the referral down. I was very careful to strip out my frustration in not being able to connect and had one of my coworkers read it to make sure it didn’t sound angry.

“I received an email back immediately from this prospect saying he had been in Europe for the last 10 days, and his secretary didn’t advise him of my efforts,” says Shaw. “By having someone else read my email, I made sure that I didn’t get into an embarrassing adversarial situation.”

Shaw’s final point on written sales letters is not in the writing but the enclosures.

“When you send out a sales letter, always include relevant enclosures that will win prospects over with validating and reassuring data,” says Shaw. “But don’t overwhelm them with meaningless stuff that isn’t applicable to what they want to accomplish.”

Hodgman advises salespeople to literally send themselves a copy of the letter they’re thinking of mailing.

“Write yourself a letter, include inserts and mail it to your house or business,” says Hodgman. “Open it and see if it’s compelling enough for you to respond to it.”

“It’s the same concept of calling yourself, leaving a message on your answering machine or in voice mail and asking yourself if you sound like someone you’d return a call to,” adds Hodgman

“In our business, salespeople can grow in quantum leaps, and one of the ways to make that happen is to take the time to become proficient in writing,” says Hodgman. “It’s one of the differences between the 80 percent mediocre salespeople and the 20 percent who are the top producers and make the most money…and have the most fun doing it.”

Sidebar: The expert says

“Salespeople need to keep in mind that all writing is sales writing,” says Brian Hanington, CEO of the Backdraft Corporation, a company that specializes in writing quality-management programs. “Good sales writing builds an impression and conveys information with an added layer of credibility. Used strategically, it enhances and moves the sales process along.”

Hanington believes that, in order to write effective letters or emails, salespeople need to determine an objective to the correspondence and write in the active voice.

“Every letter or email has to have a reason for being written and sent,” says Hanington. “It may be a prospecting letter, promoting a new product or service or reinforcing a sale or relationship. The important thing is to have a point for sending it out.”

“Writing in the passive voice diminishes the appeal and the clarity of the message,” says Hanington, “Good sales writing informs, inspires and is written in the active voice.”

What’s the difference between passive and active voices? The sentence “Traffic was seen crossing the intersection” is written in the passive voice. The sentence “Traffic crossed the intersection” is in the active voice. The sentence “The book was read by Mother” is passive. In the active voice, it’s “Mother read the book.” If you’re using the word was a lot, you’re writing in the passive voice.

Then there is vocabulary. “Management should encourage salespeople to increase their active vocabulary and use those words in their writing,” says Hanington. “Most English-speaking professionals have a passive vocabulary of approximately 50,000 words and an active vocabulary of 10,000 words or fewer.”

“Use words that position yourself as an expert and give somebody a reason to call you,” says Hanington. “Also be aware of relevance and ‘immaterials’ – a fact in your letter may be relevant but immaterial, and all it does is take up space.”

According to Hanington, writing multiple drafts, varying sentence length and recruiting someone else to critique and proof your correspondence all improve the quality and effectiveness of business writing,

“We find that many people don’t know how to take the warts off their writing and one of the ways is to reread what you’ve written, rewrite it and have someone else proof it,” says Hanington. “And all letters you write in the heat of night should always be burned in the morning.”

“One of the coolest tools I know for salespeople to make their writing better is to vary the length of their sentences,” says Hanington. “Make sure that every fifth sentence is no longer than five words. It helps to force salespeople to specifically hone in on what the message is that they want to convey and to express that message crisply.”

Hanington advises salespeople to “unpack their ideas” and allow the “river of ideas to flow” when writing and not to resort to boring corporate boilerplate copy.

“When salespeople are in front of a prospect or customer, they’re always listening for objections and ways to overcome them, and it should be similar in writing,” says Hanington. “Sales writing has to be just as convincing. Read it out loud, pretending that you don’t believe what you wrote, and add something that overcomes those objections. Speak individually, creatively and make sure you get your benefits across.”

Hanington’s final point is this: “Make absolutely sure that everything is spelled and punctuated correctly. Misspelled words and typos can be very costly in terms of sales.”

Brian Hanington is CEO of Backdraft Corporation, an Ottawa, Ontario, Canada-based firm that offers online and on-site writing training services. For information, call 613/683-4100, or visit them online at www.backdraft.org.