Hand-Written Sales Letters

July29,

Forget hand-writing the letters... It's completely incongruent with your position as an online marketing expert and it's a waste of time.

Write a great letter (or have one written), design it cleanly and professionally (or have it designed), and don't run out of the door like a phone book delivery, dude.

Every single person that you meet inside that business can help you in one way or another. Even if they don't make decisions, they know who does. Even if they don't want to tell you much, they can tell you something.

Write the owner a THANK YOU note or card by hand after you meet with them and it might convey what you want it to convey.

Hope this helps and good luck,

Brian


Brian

July, based on experience of offline mail order... yes, handwritten (actually printed in handwritten text on yellow lined paper), in some cases does outpull readership over traditional.

However I always stuck to traditional, with handwritten side notes... to highlight or exemplify important points.

Because people are reading normal print text every day. Online, TV, papers.

Then comes along handwritten, and one actually has to apply effort to decode the characters. Hence some will immediately discard the letter.

At least I ALWAYS do when I get a handwritten offline sales letter.

Awesome. Thanks for the feedback guys. What you have said makes sense and is just the input i was lookin' for.

I second Andre.

Why?

Because for the last 12 months I have mailed thousands of letters/ postcards and packages (130 at a time to the CEO of specific targeted businesses I'd love to do business with), all personilized using Word with notes on the sides, top and bottom. Highlighter highlighting highlights.

The results have been great.

Been contacted by 18 CEO's and had meeting with 12 so far.
Try it and reap your rewards.

I agree with LoudMac...even if he is loud.

One other point against a handwritten letter is that, unless you have exceptionally neat and uniform handwriting, handwriting slows down readability in a message of any length. You definitely do want to make it harder to read than typewritten text or it might be discarded without being given a full perusal. It probably will be by some anyway, don't give them an excuse to discard it faster.

Right on. I like the idea of a type-written letter with a small hand-written note on the side.

If you have two numbers, put one on the letter then hand write My direct number is...

Garrie

Oh, wow, July,

You are going to go into a business and walk out without speaking to anybody except to ask them to pass on a letter?

Just stop and think a little.

Your visit to a business must be much more than a mail drop, it has to be the foundation upon which you will build a fact find which will, in turn, be the foundation for your deal.

At the very least you should do two things
1) you should find out if the person that you want to have the letter handed to is the decision maker for the service/product you want to offer
2) you should ask if you can hand the letter to him and introduce yourself so that he knows what to expect when you ask for an appointment - which you can do at the same time.

If you are going to create a good first impression, don't try to get a letter to do it for you.
Imagine the scenario:-
"Fred, a young lady asked me to give you this letter."
"Where is she?"
"Oh, she didn't stay. She just asked me to give you this letter."
"Just put it on that pile there. It will be another advert."

With the time demands that busy people have, there is no point at all in wasting any opportunity to get in front of them. Many sales people find that they cannot get past the gate keeper because they do not know how to win their confidence. With your approach, you won't even find out if there is a gate keeper!