One of the best ways to begin a sales letter ...

One of the best ways to begin a sales letter is with a question.
Sales people know that asking their prospects questions, not only
builds trust, but also extracts important information on which to
base their appeal.

Consider this opening of a sales letter for a fictitious product
that restores hair in bald men:

Dear Friend,

Are you worried about your present hair loss? Have you already
tried hair restoration products that didn't live up to their
claims? Are you embarrassed to look in the mirror? Are you about
to settle for the myth that 'this is just genetic and nothing can
be done about it?

As you read through each question you can see how the copywriter
tries to enter a conversation with the reader by showing that he
knows what concerns him. The prospect also assumes that since you
raised the questions that you have the solutions to his problems.

In the case of a sales letter you cannot ask the prospect
questions expecting to get a live answer, since the letter is a
one way conversational tool. But asking the questions that the
prospect is already asking helps build rapport and gets his
attention.

Some of the greatest thinkers and philosophers asked the correct
questions that led them to discover some of the laws of nature
that we take for granted today. Asking questions early in the
sales letter can also cause the reader to think in the direction
you want him to follow.

Since you are trying to build rapport at the beginning of the
letter you want to ask questions with a definite 'yes' answer.
Questions such as, "Do you want to make more money than you are
making now?" will get the client nodding in agreement with you.
The answer to the questions should also be the main benefits that
is offered by your product or service.

Questions also help to engage the reader early in the sales
process because he is forced right away to think about the
answers. The copywriter must assume that readers come to the
letter with a preoccupied mind and the only way to break through
this natural barrier is to tune the mind to a different
frequency. Questions are therefore great 'attention-getters'.

Another effective way to use questions in the sales letter is to
raise objections in the form of questions and then answer them
one by one. This is one of the ways that I have used the
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for clients and incorporate
these into the main sales letter. If people keep asking these
questions this means that your sales message is not answering
them and these questions are really objections to buying your
product.

For example, if you are selling a software product that helps
people create videos to be uploaded to YouTube and prospects keep
asking how large are the video files output from your software,
then this question is one objection you must meet squarely.

In that case I would suggest that you raise the question: "Does
you software produce high quality videos with small file sizes?"
I would then immediately answer that question by illustrating the
file size inputs compare to the output and comment on the quality
versus the file size.

Questions are powerful sales tools that are frequently taken for
granted and not used often enough. Asking a question can often
engage a reader more than simply sharing facts with them. And
getting attention these days is one of the toughest battles to be
fought online.

How have you found this technique helpful in your own marketing?
(Questions can help build engagement.)


-Ray Edwards