How to Make Writing a Sales Letter Easy

If you script out your copy as a conversation, you have an almost effortless sales letter.

If you’re having a conversation with a friend, sharing a solution you’ve found, you’re speaking a sales letter. These are things I’d say to a friend… I would say, “Hey, are you struggling, or are you frustrated, because you don’t have as much energy as you used to have? If you feel like you’re getting older, faster than the clock is ticking. Are you feeling frustrated because you’ve been snapping at your husband, or your wife? Have you been getting road rage lately? And, by the way, have you gained an extra 10 or 15 lbs lately?”

Then, you just transition to sharing a solution: “I would love to tell you what I’ve done recently. You know in the last 6 months, I’ve started this little aerobics program, and you tell a little bit about it. Wow! After about 2 months of doing this aerobics program, I’m not snapping at my husband or wife anymore, I don’t have road rage, I’m a much calmer person, I’m having more energy, I can walk the stairs, and all of those kinds of things.”

And maybe you just ask the question in the sales letter. You say, “Would you like to learn how to do that? If so, I’ve got a great class. Mon, Wed & Fri at noon I meet you online, and we do this aerobics. We set up this little camera, or you can use your phone. We’re on Skype or Facetime or something, and you do it in your house, and I do it here, and I’ll show you how to do it. And, these are all the things that will happen while you’re there. That’s how it works.”

In a sales letter you’re talking about a product, of course. There’s going to be a price to join. Well, you might be writing copy for something that’s free – an intro session so you can upsell later on. But, the price is irrelevant, you just say, “Hey, there’s a price.” If you’re meeting your friend for coffee, and the friend says, “How much is it going to cost?” Well, since it’s your friend, you might say, “Well, it’s not going to cost you anything. But, the gym requires a $5 entrance fee.” So, your friend would pay that. Let’s leave it at the friend example.

When we’re doing this, we are simply talking to a friend, when we’re writing that letter. In my personal opinion, it doesn’t need to be any deeper than that. It doesn’t need to have any NLP, or any special highlighting, or any super-duper-scientific persuasion language that’s going to make people feel like being bit by the snake behind the snake oil. I don’t believe that we need to use any special “super power” language to be able to communicate the human-ness of what’s going on.

In my opinion, and in the way that I like to write a sales letter, I want it to be like a conversation at a coffee shop.

Obviously, if we take that coffee shop conversation to the next level, then we might add a price to it. Let’s just imagine we’re talking with our friend again, but instead of just inviting them to meet us for a private meeting, maybe I say to my friend, “Here’s the thing, I meet with about 12 other people, on Mon, Wed, Fri at 12:00, and they each pay $50/month to be able to meet with me. And, you know, friend, if you would like to join me, I would love to have you join me, come over for the 1st meet. It won’t cost you anything, and you’re my friend, so it won’t cost you anything at all. Now, it wouldn’t be fair to everybody else that’s paying, for you to come and not pay, so the only thing I ask is that you’ll enroll just like everybody else after that first session.” So, that might be the only difference if it’s a real friend, vs it’s the friends we’re making online.

I don’t believe we should sell anything to anybody that isn’t in some way our friend. You want to connect with your customers, clients, and/or students on some level. On some level you care about them. It’s going to be different than your “best friend,” but you have to care about the people you’re helping to succeed in business. So when you write to these people, you write to them like you care about them, like they’re a friend on some level. It makes writing copy almost effortless because you’re truly connecting.