Too few and you might walk away from a sale when you’re 95% of the way to a successful close – too many and you may risk alienating your prospect to such an extent that they will resist any future efforts.

However, in my experience, the vast majority of people err on the side of too few contacts.  Many clients are shocked when we have our first meeting and I tell them that the best statistical estimates are between 10 and 12 contacts before a prospect becomes interested.

In the 80′s the statistics were around 8.5 contacts.  In the 90′s, between 8.5 and 10.  Given the vast proliferation of email marketing over the past 5 or 6 years, I’d say 10 to 12 contacts is a fairly conservative estimate.

Having said that, it also depends on what you are selling as well as the price point relative to the market.

Business to business sales and higher price point sales generally take longer and require more communication than an impulse driven. low price point consumer product.

It stands to reason that with the amount of information we’re all bombarded with, one of the key criteria in how many contacts we’d need to become interested in buying something, is our desire and need for that item at the particular time that we’re approached.

It may take multiple approaches using a progressive ‘educational’ approach, giving the reader more reasons to take action each time. To achieve the optimum number of contacts, we have to realise that the number really depends on where the prospect happens to be in the interest cycle.

If they’ve already pretty much decided to buy, then your first contact may well be the one that tips them in favor of your offering as opposed to your competitors’. If they’ve just begun researching the subject, you will need further contacts to provide the information they’re looking for and to position your product as the ideal choice.  If they’ve never thought of purchasing this particular item, it will take even more contacts over a longer period of time – and a great deal of consistency on your part to maintain contact in the face of seeming disinterest.

So, how do you cover all your bases and ensure that no matter where your prospect is, that you provide as much, as frequently as necessary without becoming a pest?

The easiest way is to predetermine a theme that can be broken up into about 10 or 12 segments.

• Take each segment and create an informative email of perhaps 6 to 8 paragraphs each focusing on a single main point.
• Take all your information and create an e-book or report in a long and a short version which can also be offered at various points during the communication.
• Adding direct mail to your email communication in the form of letters, packages or even postcards can increase your impact significantly.  Of course, these will cost more than emailing, but depending upon the item you’re selling, the extra cost may easily be justified by the increase in response that ‘mixing’ media can bring.
• Combining direct mail and email adds to the perceived value and importance of your communication and also helps prevent email ‘overload’.
• Adding follow up phone calls provides another dimension and can be super effective – provided you are offering something of value and your call does not resemble the standard telemarketing approach in any way.

While it’s true that you do want to keep some information back as ‘bait’ to entice people to call, simply leaving out pertinent information is not the way to do it.

By leaving out pertinent information, you actually REMOVE reasons for your prospect to call.  Let’s take a typical example:

You’re selling your home and it has a number of nice upgrades and special finishes such as heated floors and hardwood imported from Brazil.  Now by leaving out these details and simply describing the house as being finished ‘luxuriously’ leaves a lot to the imagination – but not enough for the reader to actually form a picture in their mind – or develop a desire to see and experience that luxury.

On the other hand, by describing the hardwood, for instance, as beautiful, warm toned Brazilian hardwood from ethically managed plantations custom imported and laid using a special technique that helps make the rooms look and feel larger – now that would get the reader thinking.

As soon as they begin thinking, they begin imagining what this must look like.  They begin wondering what this special technique is, and how much would this have cost?  The value is immediately perceived as higher than the run of the mill hardwood floor.

By painting a picture through providing more information as opposed to less, you give your prospect more to think about – and more reasons to call. By withholding information, you don’t create more curiosity – you simply don’t give them enough to become curious in the first place.

Think about your promotional writing as if it were an episode in a thriller... you set the stage, you build the plot, you raise the tension – and as the hero is about to…. you stop.  Not many people would not want to know what happens next.  So they wait in anticipation for the next episode to find out.

In the case of your promotion, they don’t have to wait, all they have to do is call.

So give them something to call about.

A letter that’s so compelling that you can FEEL yourself enjoying the benefits of owning the product?  You find yourself holding your breath and perhaps even skipping down to order information before you’ve even finished reading it.

It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, you’re literally compelled to get your hands on the product that instant.  You’re a willing participant in the process and you simply cannot wait to begin using your new acquisition.

How does that happen?

It happens when the sales letter has hit your ‘hot button’ and satisfied you that it’s a credible, ‘cannot lose’ offer.  Usually this kind of letter will have a very specific structure.  It will lead you effortlessly through a carefully planned process until you, seemingly of your own volition, come to an inevitable conclusion: you have to have it!  Whatever ‘it’ is, it will be something that you feel you can no longer live without.  If you only had it, it would be your key to health, popularity, riches, fame… insert whatever your particular desire may be.

How can you craft such a letter for your products and services?

Here are the basic components used to create a powerful, profit generating letter:

1. Headline – the ‘ad’ for the story – this is critical to your letter’s success and requires that the reader is stopped in their tracks so effectively that they simply cannot move on until they’ve read the letter
2. Sub-headlines: used to break the main ‘idea’ into smaller, easily understood thoughts.  A ‘scanner’ will be able to read the headline and the sub-headlines and get the gist of the story.
3. The Lead or Introduction: in which you create the ‘hook’ or the curiosity generating proposal that will intrigue the reader to read the letter.  This is where you’ll ‘join the conversation’ in your reader’s head as Robert Collier put it, speaking to them on a point and at an emotional level to which they will immediately respond.
4. The Body: in which you draw the reader into imagining themselves enjoying the benefits of the product and where you provide the ‘proof’ demonstrating why the product is as good as you say it is.  Here’s where you’ll expand on the product’s unique strategic positioning – in other words, what makes it different and better than the competition.  This part will form the bulk of your letter and it should have enough information to convince your reader that they need what it is that you’re selling.  But… be careful… too much information could convince them of the opposite!
5. The Pre-Close or False Close: This is where logically the reader expects to be ‘sold’.  It’s where they’ll be expecting you to wrap the whole thing up and ask for the sale.  At this point, you break the pattern and give them another angle on the benefits they’ll enjoy, or a testimonial or some other information consolidating what you’ve told them before.  Then, you go for the
6. Close and Ordering information: This is where you reiterate the benefit they’ll enjoy, set their mind at rest with a guarantee and then tell them how to buy.  At this stage you’ll probably want to offer more than one purchase method.  Rather than making the choice between ‘should I purchase’ or ‘should I not purchase’, make the choice between ‘should I purchase using PayPal or credit card” and “should I call the toll free number or order online”.
7. The Post Script: the P.S. at the end of powerful profit-generating sales letters is not there because the writer forgot to include something, even though it may seem that way.  The P.S. is a powerful tool in its own right.  It’s the place you throw in your best shot.  The most compelling reason, the best bonus, the greatest reward for acting NOW.  It gives you an opportunity to ‘bump’ a hesitant reader into action.  At times, it’s this ‘bonus’ offer that has such value to the reader that they decide to make the purchase – they want that bonus!  It’s also where the ordering information can be repeated.  Repetition in this area is good.  ‘Scanners’ tend to scan headlines, sub-headlines and then skip to the P.S.  By having the pertinent information in this area, you’ll be sure to convert more readers than if you don’t.

Use these guidelines to craft your next sales letter.  You’re bound to find a better response and higher profits.

A writer is usually inspired to write an article by a desire to express an opinion, share information or otherwise vent about a particular subject.  In other words, the subject is more emotionally driven than analytical.  Even when the subject is decided by a client.  Being a ‘creative’ person, a writer tends to evolve a train of thought during the research process and then, when writing, allow that train to carry them from the introduction through to the conclusion.

Of course, editing once the article is written helps to clarify the direction and move the reader through the thought process in a logical fashion, but it won’t necessarily help them find your article in the first place.

In order for them to find your article, and drive traffic to your website and your business, we have to have a slight shift of mindset from being purely creative to being a little more methodical and analytical.

To help your readers find your article it need to incorporate  specific keywords that will allow their readers to find their articles.  These keywords are words that are specific to the information they are looking for.  They are entered into the search engine ‘search’ box.  Keywords can be a single word or a group of words known as keyword phrases e.g. ‘flower’ and ‘flowers that grow in full sun’.

To incorporate keywords in my articles, the steps I’ve found to be the most practical are:

1. decide on the subject
2. research the most popular keywords for this subject (in my next post I will give you a list of tools you can use to do this)  Do this BEFORE you begin writing.  Don’t try and fit the keywords in afterwards.
3. choose the top keywords (maximum 8, but usually between 3 and 5)
4. then, plan your article outline while keeping those keywords in mind.  It helps if you can use those keywords (or keyword phrases) in your titles, headings and sub headings.
5. then begin writing the article ensuring that you use the keywords judiciously.  In other words, they must be used naturally and add to the meaning of the article and should not be overused.  For instance, you wouldn’t want to use the same keyword more than once or twice in a paragraph and not more than 8 times in the entire article.

As I said before, this does require a shift in perspective when writing if you’ve been accustomed to writing as your inspiration directs. It slows the process a bit and can be fairly challenging until you’ve acquired the habit of following this procedure.

The payoff is that your article will be more easily found and gain higher search engine rankings. Whether you’re writing for business or your own edification, this is important.  If you’ve gone to the trouble of writing an article and doing the necessary research, doing a little more work to ensure that you’re using the correct keyword ‘triggers’ makes sense.

After all, it’s pretty pointless to research and write an article that will be difficult for your target audience to find.