Let me show you how to get

great sales results - fast!

The Art of Influencing and Selling

The Art of •
Influencing Jargon free
and Selling
•
This book will help you to use Accessible
tried and tested no-fuss sales
techniques to approach
prospective customers and •
clients without them wanting
No detailed
to run a mile! We’ll give you the
confidence to write and deliver knowledge The Art of
required
Influencing
effective sales material and
presentations as well as
positively negotiate and close
the sale.

You’ll learn how to make

•
Signposts and Selling
intelligent use of databases and the reader
other sales tools rather than to all the
becoming a slave to them, and
how to create a realistic sales important bits
pipeline. You’ll develop skills
that will get the most out of your
investment in sales and
•
marketing activities. The GURU is
out of the
BOTTLE!

Ardi Kolah LL.M is a prolific author and

one of the most respected marketing and
Ardi Kolah

communication practitioners in the world. He

holds a Master’s degree in law and is a fellow of
the Chartered Institutes of Marketing and Public
Relations, and a Liveryman of the Worshipful
Company of Marketors. His unique approach
has made Guru in a Bottle® extremely popular
throughout Europe, the UnitedI S B NStates and India.
978-0-7494-6448-6

£19.99 ISBN: 978-0-7494-6448-6

Kogan Page
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[Link] Kogan
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 Contents

About the author ix

Introduction 1

About this book 2

1 Psychology of selling a product or

service or yourself 5
The art of persuasion 5
The big issue 6
Trust builder 7
Redefinition of selling 9
Seeing things differently 10
Collaboration is the future of selling 11
Hypnotizing the audience to fall under your spell! 13

2 The sales pipeline and how to

ensure it’s realistic 17
Introduction 17
Doing business on customers’ terms 19
The lead conversion process 28
Real and virtual worlds of prospecting for customers or clients 42
Monitoring the performance of your prospecting efforts 49

3 Up-selling, cross-selling,
cold calling and warm calling 63

Introduction 63
The myths about selling 64
Asking the right questions 65
vi Contents

How to build rapport 66

How to apply outcome thinking 68
The art of up-selling 69
How to cross-sell successfully 77
How to cold-call without someone hanging up 79
How to turn a warm call into a sale 85

4 Effective approaches to prospective

customers and clients 89
Introduction 89
Six ways to make a lasting impression 90
Understanding the short cuts to getting what we want 95
The art of sales negotiation 96
The future is about collaborating for profit 99

5 How to interrogate a database of

contacts to get more sales 103
Introduction 103
Developing a customer, client and supporter database 105
Basic principles of data mining 106
Customer, client and supporter acquisition strategies 109
Using survival analysis to understand customers, clients and
supporters 118

6 Making an effective sales

presentation 123
Introduction 123
It’s about them, not about you 126
Overcoming your fears 130
Prior preparation prevents poor performance 137
Body talk 141
Delivering an effective sales pitch 146
How to avoid ‘death by bullet points’ 157
How to make a great close 160

7 How to write effective sales

materials 167
Introduction 167
Outside in, not inside out 169
Content is king 170
 Contents vii
Sales copy tips 174
E-mail 178
Web page 182
Online newsletters 187
Google AdWords 189
Sales letter 196
Product sales brochure 198
International Chamber of Commerce Code (2011) 199

8 The power of business

networking 207
Introduction 207
Face to face 209
Word of mouth 214
Power of social media 218
Brand advocacy 219
Customer and client feedback 221
LinkedIn 225
Twitter 230
Facebook 233

9 How to get senior-level

appointments in your diary 239

Introduction 239
Doing your homework 240
The basic etiquette of making an appointment 241
Identifying the appropriate decision maker 246
Getting past the gatekeeper 249
Tools to get appointments – LinkedIn 250

10 Closing a sale and follow-up 255

Introduction 255
You’ve one chance to make a good first impression 257
Asking for what you want 258
Reading the signs 259
Overcoming objections and concerns 261
Remote closing 265
Maintaining the customer or client through to the next sale 275

Index 281
Endorsements 289
Introduction

T
he art of influencing and selling is neatly summarized by this quote
taken from the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by
US sales guru Dale Carnegie: ‘When dealing with people, let us
remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing
with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated
by pride and vanity.’ What’s fascinating is that this was written in 1953 and
well before access to the powerful databases we have today, which contain
millions of bits of data on just about every aspect of our lives that it is
legally possible to hold.
What Dale Carnegie said then holds true today. If we only operate on
a rational basis in order to try to influence our desired customer or client
to purchase our product or service, then we’ll fail miserably.
It’s true that we mustn’t ignore logic or the ability of critical argument
and evaluation that dominates so much of the way in which we are taught
to think and make decisions. Just look at the soap powder TV commercials
of the 1950s and 1960s, where consumers were blinded with the power of
the technology to make their clothes ‘whiter than white’! There was almost
a messianic obsession about selling features rather than benefits. And if you
think times have changed and that approach is dead and buried along with
the cheesy commercials with women restricted to the role of housewives,
well I’m afraid it’s still alive and kicking amongst some businesses! The
problem is that the traditional thinking we apply to today’s sales challenges
just isn’t up to the job any more.
What many of the most successful businesses on the planet have in
common is the ability to challenge the conventional wisdom that has for
too long dominated the way we think. In essence, these organizations have
replaced one-dimensional with multidimensional thinking.
Much of our thinking is done in a disorganized, inefficient way. We often
try to do too much at once. Emotions, information, logic, hope, risk and
creativity are all mixed up together. It’s like juggling too many balls all at
once, and some end up getting dropped. As a result of this juggling act, we
begin to limit our thinking and make poor decisions. Often, we tend to use
only one type of thinking at any given moment. Yet one type of thinking is
no longer adequate to cope with today’s rapidly changing and challenging
2 The Art of Influencing and Selling

commercial environment. Judgement and argument can no longer solve all

problems or move us forward. We need a multidimensional approach in
order to succeed.
And this is what this book is about. We need to think about influencing
and selling in 3D and not just online! We need to be collaborative, focused and
directed. We need, in short, to rewire our thinking about how to influence
and sell to our desired customer and client segments wherever we are and
whatever business we happen to be in. We need to be able to navigate different
avenues of thought to build insight, creative ideas and effective sales solu-
tions if we want to be successful in this endeavour.
If you follow the approach we advocate here in this book, then you’ll be
on your way to creating more sales for your business. And the guru won’t
just be out of the bottle. The guru will be you!

About this book

Chapter 1: Psychology of selling a product or service or yourself
In this chapter, we’ll look at the psychology of influence and the role that
you play regardless of the product or service you’re trying to sell.

Chapter 2: The sales pipeline and how to ensure it’s realistic

In this chapter, we’ll show you how to put together a realistic rather than
pie-in-the-sky sales pipeline where the chances of success are greater and
will keep a smile on the face of your boss!

Chapter 3: Up-selling, cross-selling, cold calling and warm calling

In this chapter, we’ll analyse and rehearse the key skills you need to be
effective in getting a chance of making a sale with a desired customer or
client prospect.

Chapter 4: Effective approaches to prospective customers and clients

In this chapter, having discussed how the tools work and what you need to
make a sale, we’ll show you how to strut your stuff.

Chapter 5: How to interrogate a database of contacts to get more sales

In this chapter, we’ll take a no-fuss look at database marketing without
making you glaze over in the process!

Chapter 6: Making an effective sales presentation

In this chapter, we’ll take you through some of the best ways in which to
make a first impression in a sales presentation by looking at some of
the tips and tricks used by seasoned sales presenters.
 Introduction
3
Chapter 7: How to write effective sales materials
In this chapter, we’ll show you the way you should approach having to
write sales brochures, newsletters and flyers that are aimed at customers
and clients and reduce the chance of them being deleted or ending up in
the waste bin!

Chapter 8: The power of business networking

In this chapter, we’ll show you how to use the power of online and offline
networking, as well as the importance of being recommended by other
customers and clients, which could be your most powerful sales weapon.

Chapter 9: How to get senior-level appointments in your diary

In this chapter, we’ll show you how to get past the ‘gatekeeper’ and get
that all-important appointment with the key decision maker who can
authorize to spend budget with you!

Chapter 10: Closing a sale and follow-up

In this chapter, we’ll show you, once you’ve succeeded in opening a sale,
how to close it successfully, as well as what to do after the sale has been made.
 1
Psychology of selling
a product or service
or yourself

In this chapter:

●● The art of persuasion

●● The big issue
●● Trust builder
●● Redefinition of selling
●● Seeing things differently
●● Collaboration is the future of selling
●● Hypnotizing the audience to fall under your spell!

The art of persuasion

Shortly after British prime minister Gordon Brown called the 2010 general
election, the Conservative Party leader David Cameron took a trip to the
Variety bakery in Bolton, England. With shirt sleeves rolled up, the ‘prime-
minister-in-waiting’ stood on a plastic crate to speak to a group of bemused
6 The Art of Influencing and Selling

Warburtons employees. It was a clear clash of cultures: David Cameron

with his upper-class vowels addressing a group of about 100 no-nonsense
bakers in blue boiler suits. A couple of TV crews were on standby to record
David Cameron’s blushes.
You could call it a high-risk strategy. Already well ahead in the public
opinion polls, David Cameron had much to lose and little to gain from
such stark exposure on national television. Yet the Conservative leader’s
campaign was full of similarly high-risk public appearances and photo
opportunities.
After Warburtons, David Cameron visited a west London brewery, a
branch of DIY shop B&Q and a Bestway Cash and Carry warehouse. It was
a schedule designed to evoke the more prosaic qualities of life. Beer, white
bread, DIY – the message was delivered straight into our subconscious:
‘I’m more like you than you think.’ Well, that was the idea. And of course,
after he was elected, David Cameron unveiled his ‘Big Society’ vision, which
became much derided.
But back to life on the campaign trail. All of these photo opportunities
raised the one question that was nagging away at David Cameron: could
the British public be persuaded to trust him?
This episode is relevant when considering the art of influencing and
selling within a business context, and we’ll get back to David Cameron in
a moment.

The big issue

The biggest issue in business right now isn’t lack of lending by the banks,
decrease in disposable incomes and the depressed state of the developed
economies of the West – although of course all of these issues combine to
have an impact on business and the survival of companies in certain sectors.
The biggest issue is trust or, put another way, lack of trust.
Every day, we wake up to news stories about those whom we thought we
could trust – bankers, MPs, lords, judges, the jury system, big corporations
and business leaders – only to find that individuals and even whole organ­
izations fall far short of how we expect them to behave and as a result can’t
be trusted any more. When bosses talk of pay restraint required from the
workforce and then reward themselves eye-watering bonuses, who can trust
them?
From a sales point of view, trust or the lack of trust is a major issue. If
people don’t trust us, they won’t buy from us. It’s as simple as that.
In order to build trust we need to be able to communicate, and increas-
ingly that means being not just in ‘transmit mode’ but more importantly in
‘receive mode’. A successful salesperson is someone who listens.
So there’s no point shouting ever louder at the top of our voice if no one
is bothering to listen to us. And it doesn’t win friends or influence people,
 Psychology of Selling a Product or Service or Yourself
7
does it? Worse still, it makes us look ineffective and desperate. Try this
simple test: walk down your local high street before Christmas and then
return home and write down the names of the furniture stores that had
‘SALE NOW ON’ signs in their windows. It’s likely you won’t remember all
of them, as we are conditioned now to screen out messages rather than
screen them in. It all becomes a bit of a blur, doesn’t it?

Trust builder
It follows that selling a product or service is inextricably linked to whether
customers, clients, consumers and prospects can trust the person or organ­
ization making that offer. This move to the source of the offer rather than
just focusing on the features and benefits of a product or service is now core
to the thinking of several global brand owners, including Procter & Gamble,
Unilever and Coca-Cola, which are now placing much more emphasis on the
‘corporate brand’ as a key to building trust with their customers in order to
drive incremental sales.
The psychology of selling is shifting away from being transactional to-
wards building a meaningful dialogue with customers, clients, consumers
and prospects that’s built on trust.
David Cameron’s attempt to portray himself as a ‘man of the people’ in
the hope that voters would see him as their future prime minister was
fuelled in part by his belief that he wanted to be liked.
We tend to be influenced by people who are similar to us. David Cameron,
with his Etonian upper-class pedigree and charming looks, is arguably quite
different from the voters who live in Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire in Scotland.
But his campaign strategy was to break down the perception of disparity.
According to British business psychologist Stuart Duff, David Cameron
wanted voters to trust him even though he’d never held ministerial respon-
sibility in his relatively short political career. ‘If I can convince you that
you’re more like me, you’ll start to tolerate me more for the things that I do
wrong; you’ll start to tolerate me more and start to notice the positive things
I do rather than the negative things’, observes Stuart Duff.
Clearly, David Cameron had thought about the barriers that separated
him from the public, and his campaign strategy was to remove those nega-
tive stereotypes that surround a person of privilege and power, including
their name – hence he wanted henceforth to be referred to in the media as
‘Dave’ rather than David. What next? Fluffy dice with the moniker ‘Dave
and Sam’ (Samantha is his wife) hanging from the rear-view mirror of his
Ford Escort? Such a folksy strategy has long been abandoned. And in any
event such a strategy was doomed to fail before it had begun.
David Cameron had received a mixed reception in Bolton. His approach
was solid enough, but he muddled his tactics. Starting with a cringe-making
joke about bakers, his self-deprecation felt false. He was a politician desperate
8 The Art of Influencing and Selling

to be liked, which is a common mistake of leaders, who frequently believe

the best way to gain influence is to make themselves likeable.
According to British business academic Steve Martin, likeability as a
method of persuasion isn’t that effective:
We are conditioned to be more likely to say ‘yes’ to those people who
like us and who tell us they like us, because we’ve been taught that they
have our best interest at heart. Leaders seeking to build networks of
followers should spend less time trying to be liked and put more effort
into highlighting characteristics of followers that they genuinely admire.
Most sales training programmes say that the first thing you need to do is
to get your customer to like you. That’s not true. The first thing you
should do is learn to like your customer.
The transactional approach to selling is far from dead and buried. Evidence
of this can be found in the poor sales performance of many businesses strug-
gling to keep afloat in these turbulent economic times as well as on the web.
According to Wikipedia, ‘selling’ is defined as:
Offer to exchange something of value for something else. The something
of value being offered may be tangible or intangible. Buying and selling
are understood to be two sides of the same coin or transaction. Both
seller and buyer are in a process of negotiation to consummate the
exchange of values. The exchange, or selling, process has implied rules
and identifiable stages. It is implied that the selling process will proceed
fairly and ethically so that the parties end up nearly equally rewarded.
The stages of selling, and buying, involve getting acquainted, assessing
each party’s need for the other’s item of value, and determining if the
values to be exchanged are equivalent or nearly so, or, in buyer’s terms,
‘worth the price’.
What the definition doesn’t get into is the relative bargaining positions of
the buyer and seller – and this varies widely between industry sectors and
markets. Not everyone is equal, of course.
Celebrated US psychologist Abraham Maslow believed that all of us
strive to satisfy certain basic needs (Figure 1.1), and these needs he placed
at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs all of us have.
According to Maslow, once all the basic needs have been satisfied, they
no longer motivate individuals in terms of their behaviour. In contrast, more
deep-rooted needs, such as self-expression, are self-propelling, and there is a
continuous desire within us to ‘be all that we can be’. This state is described
as self-actualization, and focusing on satisfying the psychological desires of
our customers, clients and prospects rather than just their basic needs is
likely to result in more sales. The transactional view of selling, exchanging
goods or services for money, is now outmoded. Customer, clients and pro­
spects want and expect much, much more! It’s time to rewire our thinking
and redefine what we mean by ‘selling’.
 Psychology of Selling a Product or Service or Yourself
9
Figure 1.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

self-
actualization
morality, creativity,
spontaneity, acceptance,
experience purpose,
meaning and inner potential

self-esteem
confidence, achievement, respect of others,
the need to be a unique individual

love and belonging

friendship, family, intimacy, sense of connection

safety and security

health, employment, property, family and social stability

physiological needs
breathing, food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep

Redefinition of selling
In many sales contexts, both parties often struggle to understand complex
offerings and so instead end up focusing on price. Part of the problem is that
some sales professionals tend to treat everyone the same, with the result
that they often fail to close the sale.
There’s no such thing as an ‘average’ customer or client, and we need to
shift our thinking from mass to niche if we want to achieve success in our
sales and marketing efforts.
As a result, there’s been a fundamental shift in our obsession with cus-
tomers or clients. After all, it’s much more profitable focusing on their
attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviours than our own. If we are prepared
to go to customers or clients rather than push product at them in the hope
they will open their wallets, then this will create a new dialogue from which
we can grow any business. The starting point is the customer or client’s
point of view (POV).
10 The Art of Influencing and Selling

‘Walmartizing’ open-heart surgery

Take open-heart surgery. Yes, really! You may not have heard of Dr Devi
Shetty, but he’s fast becoming a household name in India. He’s reinterpreted
our understanding of ‘medical care’ not just in his native India, but the whole
world. He runs a 1,000-bed hospital that provides affordable open-heart
surgery and other medical treatment for a fraction of the price in other coun­
tries – making the family-owned hospital the biggest of its kind in the world.
Devi Shetty has personally carried out over 15,000 heart ops, and calls his
approach ‘Walmartization’, which is a pun on Walmart, the world’s largest
discount department and warehouse chain.
His critics say that processing patients in such numbers is dangerous.
A quick check of the statistics tells a very different story. His hospital reports
a 1.4 per cent mortality rate within 30 days of coronary artery bypass graft
surgery, one of the most common procedures. That’s better than the 1.9 per
cent average reported in US hospitals that carry out fewer operations.

Seeing things differently

The second thing we need to do as part of our redefinition of ‘selling’ is to see
things differently. British sales and marketing guru Peter Fisk believes that
successful organizations ‘see things differently and think different things’.
Devi Shetty is a good example of this. He’s sympathetic to the needs of
patients who are tired of waiting for an appointment for open-heart surgery
and who want to get on with the rest of their lives. By carrying out so many
operations the hospital is able to reduce its costs because of economies of
scale, pass on cost savings to patients, resulting in lower hospital bills, and
treat patients on very low incomes free of charge. Arguably, these outcomes
couldn’t be achieved if Devi Shetty and his family managed the hospital
along traditional lines.
Another innovative approach that has turned into a mega-successful
sales operation is Zipcars. The company started off as an idea in a bar in
Berlin over a decade ago. Today it provides cars for use by the hour and
has over 560,000 members and 8,541 vehicles in several cities around the
world. In 2010, it achieved a turnover of around US$186 million across all
its operations, and a few years ago it acquired its rival Streetcar. The founders
didn’t understand why people had to buy cars – why not just rent one when
you need it?
Customers get a membership card and can find the nearest Zipcar from
their mobile phone. The swipe card opens the electronic door and operates
the vehicle. Customers are charged by the minute and the miles travelled.
The car is already cleared for congestion charge and has petrol in the tank
as well as insurance. It’s a business model that couldn’t have been conceived
without the internet and mobile devices, appealing to those who can’t afford
 Psychology of Selling a Product or Service or Yourself
11
Figure 1.2 Compound annual growth rate (percentage)

−1
Product/service/ Operations Business model
marketplace innovators innovators innovators

Source: Judge Business School, Cambridge University, 2010

a car – such as students – and the environmentally conscious, as well as

those for whom the economics and the costs of running a private vehicle are
now prohibitive.
Research by Judge Business School, Cambridge University has shown
that such an approach in business is so much more successful than those
that simply make incremental improvements to their products and services
with extra ‘bells and whistles’.
Businesses that are genuine innovators like Zipcar enjoy a significantly
higher compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of five times that of their
competitors (Figure 1.2). This study was based on a survey of over 4,000
businesses in 17 countries across Europe, the United States and Asia, so it’s
a compelling piece of evidence that we can’t ignore.

Collaboration is the future of selling

The third thing we must do as part of redefining our approach to ‘selling’ is to
collaborate with our customers, clients and prospects. It’s not something that
we are naturally good at, so for most companies this is still work in progress.

Threadless (2012)
One of the best examples of collaborative selling is US-based T-shirt company
Threadless, which has grown to become an annual US$1 billion turnover
12 The Art of Influencing and Selling

business in less than five years since its launch. Threadless gets its customers
to design a new range of T-shirts every week, which are sold through its
website as well as retail stores. The best designs submitted win a US$2,000
cash prize, which the online community vote for.
T-shirts cost US$3 to produce and retail for US$15, which shows that
customers are prepared to pay a premium for collaboration. What’s really
cool is that they keep coming back for more – as the community of customers
want the latest designs. This is a great example of doing things differently
– and more profitably.
This may strike you as being a new wave of thinking about how to sell
more stuff – but in fact the founding members of iconic rock band the
Grateful Dead set out to do just that in their quest to be the most com­
mercially successful band in the world.

Grateful Dead (2012)

Before the internet, bands promoted their new albums by scheduling tours
across the United States and around the world. Fans paid top dollar to
attend sold-out shows where they were treated to pyrotechnics, light shows
and of course music. Concerts were the same every night and included the
band’s ‘best of’ songs with cuts from the latest album mixed throughout
the set.
The goal of these concert tours was to sell as many records as possible to
ensure that an album went gold or platinum. Fans bought the albums at
their local record store, where they would find the list of top albums that
week taped to the wall next to the cash till. For an album to go gold in 1975,
a band had to sell 500,000 records and hit US$1 million in sales. To be
awarded the coveted platinum disc, bands had to shift in excess of 1 million
units and US$2 million in sales.
Since those days the business model for the music industry has been
turned on its head. Whereas in the past bands used tours to promote money-
making albums, today albums are used to promote highly lucrative tours,
where ticket sales run into hundreds of millions of dollars for bands like
the Rolling Stones and U2.
The Grateful Dead weren’t a conventional band in any sense way back
in 1965, and rather than focusing on selling albums like other bands they
generated revenues from ticket sales, merchandising and licensing by turn-
ing their shows into a totally unique fan experience and encouraging fans
to create their own bootleg copies of their concerts and sell merchandise
that they had made themselves using the band’s distinctive logo! This radical
marketing approach enthralled the Flower Power Generation and rapidly
propelled ‘official’ merchandise and record sales through the stratosphere.
The fans’ own enterprising activities didn’t dent sales. Quite the reverse
in fact, and it’s fuelled a continuing interest in the band amongst existing
and new audiences for the last 50 years. The result is that the band is the
 Psychology of Selling a Product or Service or Yourself
13
most commercially successful in the world today – a spectacular achieve-
ment considering that the band recorded its last album back in 1995.
The Grateful Dead broke almost every rule in the music industry book by
encouraging their fans to record shows and trade tapes; they built a mailing
list and sold tickets to their shows directly to fans so they wouldn’t get
ripped off by ticket touts. In short, the band built their business model on
live concerts and merchandise, not album sales.

Hypnotizing the audience to fall

under your spell!
Selling is incredibly personal and often depends on the ability of the seller,
so selling yourself has become much more important – whether in a business-
to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) context. Today, selling
isn’t just about the goods and services those prospective customers and
clients are buying. Increasingly, they are buying you.
Communication within a sales context must therefore work at both
a conscious and an unconscious level. Increasingly, sales professionals are
turning to hypnosis as a strategy for helping to drive sales.
Hypnosis works on influencing the unconscious mind in order to facili-
tate changes in patterns of thinking and behaviour. When people are under
hypnosis they have entered a dream-like state where their mind is relaxed.
By unlocking the power of the unconscious mind, a professional salesperson
can make suggestions that can have a profound impact on the prospective
customer or client.
This is relevant in a selling context, as during the normal course of a day
all of us have the capacity to drift in and out of consciousness. It’s the brain’s
way of dealing with information overload! Going into a trance-like state
allows people to relax and makes them open to new ideas – something that
a professional salesperson would regard as a useful state.
The following checklist is a summary of the key points covered:
●● The key to success in selling your product, your service or yourself is to
listen to your customers, clients, prospects and fans.
●● Try to see things differently and think different things.
●● Like the Grateful Dead, cultivate a dedicated, active community,
collaborating with them to co-create a lifestyle and give away
‘freemium’ content.
●● Use social media and inbound marketing concepts to help drive
incremental sales.
●● Consider tapping into the unconscious mind of the prospective
customer or client.
14 The Art of Influencing and Selling

References
Books
Ambler, T (1996) Marketing from Advertising to Zen, FT Pitman Publishing
Fisk, P (2009) Customer Genius, Capstone Publishing
Goldstein, N, Martin, S and Cialdini, R (1997) Yes! 50 secrets from the science of
persuasion, Profile Books
Maslow, A (2011) Toward a Psychology of Being, Wilder Publications
Scott, DM and Halligan, B (2010) Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead,
Wiley

Websites
Institute of Customer Service article on my keynote at the National Business
Awards 2010: [Link]
[Link] (accessed 18 June 2011)
Threadless: [Link] (accessed 18 June 2011)
Wikipedia definition of selling: [Link]
(accessed 16 June 2011)
 7
How to write effective
sales materials

In this chapter:
●● Outside in, not inside out
●● Content is king
●● Sales copy tips
●● E-mail
●● Web page
●● Online newsletters
●● Google AdWords
●● Sales letter
●● Product sales brochure
●● International Chamber of Commerce Code (2011)

Introduction
In the 1976 epic Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese, actor Robert De
Niro plays Travis Bickle, a mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran who
168 The Art of Influencing and Selling

works nights as a taxi driver in New York. Back in his rented apartment,
he is shown staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, brandishing a high-
calibre handgun.
‘You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the
hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here.
Who the f*** do you think you’re talking to?’
Yes, it’s the rhetorical question of a madman staring at himself in the
mirror. But we have more in common with Travis Bickle than you may care
to realize. How insane is it that we don’t stop to think who we’re writing
for before we invest time and resources in producing a small mountain of
sales collateral that could be destined for the recycle bin?
‘The problem with a lot of copy is that it isn’t talkin’ to me. If anything,
it’s talkin’ at me. That’s a big difference, because the centre of the universe
for that kind of copy is the writer. But who cares about the writer? Certainly
not the reader’, says British copywriter guru Andy Maslen.
Of course, he’s absolutely right. It’s highly unlikely that taking such an
approach will open a dialogue with the desired customer, client or prospect
or indeed lead to closing a sale.
In the world of sponsorship, it’s the biggest strategic error made by the
vast majority of rights holders seeking financial support for their properties
from well-endowed brand owners. Typically, a glossy sponsorship brochure
will talk about how great the property is and how successful it’s been in
engaging with fans and generating media coverage. It will contain a never-
ending list of ‘benefits’ that reads more like a shopping list than a focused
piece of copy. The fundamental flaw is that the sales collateral has been
produced entirely through the lens of the rights holder, not the intended
sponsor who could use those intellectual property rights. And typically
no effort whatsoever is made even to attempt to explain how making such
an investment would help achieve the brand-building and commercial
objectives of the potential sponsor. Doh! It’s no surprise that this ends up
in the bin in at least 95 per cent of all mailings.
As we’ve said in other places in this book, the starting point in the
journey of making a sale must be the desired customers, clients or prospects.
This holds true whether it’s up-selling, cold calling, warm calling, making a
sales pitch, networking, closing the sale or writing a piece of sales collateral.
It’s their point of view that counts.
This may sound like a challenge. How could we possibly know every-
thing that intended recipients will be interested in? After all, how do they
know they’ll want something when they don’t know it exists?
In this chapter, we’ll explore how such a barrier in our own thinking can
be removed if we’re prepared to learn to write with our eyes and our ears –
something that we weren’t taught at school but could be one of the most
valuable lessons of our sales career.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
169
Outside in, not inside out
In The End of Marketing as We Know It, former Coca-Cola chief marketing
officer Sergio Zyman gave a textbook definition of ‘seller-centric’ communi­
cation. He said: ‘Convincing consumers to buy your products is the only
reason why any company should spend its money on sales and marketing.
Buy my product. Period. If what you are doing now doesn’t get consumers
to do that, try something else.’
His book is more like a polemic on the virtues of getting back to sales and
marketing basics. It was written over a decade ago and was a reaction to
a time in the 1980s when the global economy was in better shape than it is
today and when marketing tended to be about the ‘sizzle’ rather than the
‘sausage’. He was tired of spending millions of dollars on commercials for
Coke that made us feel good about ourselves but didn’t actually translate
into incremental sales of its products.
To be fair to Sergio Zyman, the world of buying and selling is now a very
different place, where the accent is on buyer-centric approaches and col-
laboration rather than the ‘buy my product’ school of sales and marketing.
We’re sure his opinion about seller-centric communication would be very
different today.
Without doubt, the point of view (POV) of the prospective customer or
client is now a highly valuable commodity. As a result, the practice of
‘selling’ is much more ‘outside in’ rather than ‘inside out’.
Set aside any thoughts about selling stuff for the moment and put your-
self in the shoes of today’s consumer venturing out on a shopping trip in
the space of a couple of mouse clicks. Chances are you wouldn’t say no to
the following:
●● impartial advice on the best baby buggy to buy that can be folded with
one hand and stored in the boot of a small car;
●● the views of others who’ve stayed at a resort you’re thinking of booking
for a fortnight’s holiday in the sun with your family;
●● visiting a price comparison site in order to find the cheapest household
insurance; and
●● finding out how to save at least 40 per cent on textbooks you must buy
for your course.
Today’s sales materials must be created from the POV of the buyer, not the
seller. Consumers are looking for sellers that are on their side, helping them
to fulfil their hopes, desires, needs and requirements, with the minimum
of fuss and at the best possible price.
It goes back to writing with your ears and eyes.
‘The thing that really astounds me is that most copywriters really haven’t
bothered to listen deeply enough’, remarked the legendary US copywriter
Eugene Schwartz. He used to get into a taxi and start interrogating the cab
170 The Art of Influencing and Selling

driver, because that’s one way to tap into what the market’s saying. He also
used to go and watch all the top 10 box-office movies. Even if he didn’t like
them, he’d watch them anyway because that’s what the market was thinking
and feeling. This allowed him to write copy that directly appealed to this
mindset.
Before rushing to the keyboard or briefing an agency for sales literature
it’s worth building a psychological profile of the readers to whom the sales
collateral is attempting to talk:
●● Are they male or female?
●● How old are they?
●● What do they want more of and less of in their lives?
●● Where would they rather be right now?
●● What do they want more than anything else out of life?
●● What are their values?
●● How do they see themselves?
●● How do others see them?
●● Are they head or heart people?
‘Whether you’re selling to consumers or people at work, ignore the baser
human emotions at your peril. Yes, people will want to rationalize their
decisions, so make sure you provide plenty of objective reasons why buying
your product or service is a sensible thing to do. But remember that people
buy on emotional grounds first’, observes Andy Maslen.

Content is king
So said Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, way back in 1996. At that time, he
prophesied:
Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the
internet, just as it was in broadcasting. One of the exciting things about
the internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish
whatever content they can create. In a sense, the internet is the
multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to be
duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of the audience.
Reading this a decade and a half later (which in internet years is a lifetime!)
you’re struck by the limitations in Bill Gates’s vision. The comparison of the
internet with a photocopier rather gives this away. It wasn’t long after this
that brands effectively turned themselves into broadcasters and selling
moved from being all about ‘push’ to being all about ‘pull’. At the heart of
this movement was content.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
171
Case study approach
From a sales material perspective, the case study is one of the most powerful
forms of content you can create. There can be no better way of getting your
sales messages across to desired customer and client segments than by having
these delivered by your customers and clients (Table 7.1).

Table 7.1 Case study template

1 Identify the problem, Describe this clearly and succinctly in business terms.
issue, challenge or
opportunity
2 What did the customers, For example, did they research the market and draw up
clients or intermediaries a shortlist of potential solution providers?
do about this? Need to explain.
Why did they choose your company or organization
compared with others?
Need to explain this in rational and unemotional language.

3 What did your company What was your company or organization’s response?
or organization do? Did your company or organization map out a strategic plan?
Did your company or organization scope the problem or
issue?
Did your company or organization do some initial
analysis? What were the findings of this?
Did your company or organization undertake a short
research study or programme?
At this part of the case study you need to create quotes
from the customers, clients or intermediaries and
quotes from your own company or organization that
provide some ‘colour’ to the story. This is where
emotional language can be used.

4 What did your company Here you need quotes from the customers, clients or
or organization deliver? intermediaries.
‘The influencer’ quote could be from a chairman or
someone very senior within the customer, client or
intermediary organization, but someone who didn’t
authorize the contract.
‘The specifier’ quote could be from a boss within
the customer, client or intermediary who sets the
framework or direction for the work to be done but who
may not personally sign off the invoice.
‘The authorizer’ quote within the customer, client or
intermediary is from someone responsible for the scope of
work to be done and who also signs off the invoice.
172 The Art of Influencing and Selling

Table 7.1 continued

It’s also important to have numbers or statistics

(measurable stuff) that back up and validate what is
said that your company or organization has delivered.
This is the evidential basis part of the case study and in
many respects one of the most important ingredients.
5 Did this work? This is also evidential in nature.
Where possible, it’s useful to find an external third party
who can give an external and objective perspective or
endorsement on the work your company or organization
has done.
Input from an institute, professional body, recognized
university or academic can be extremely powerful and
add a level of credibility and authority to the case study.

6 What are the Need to describe the benefits delivered.

measurable benefits for Benefits should be from the perspective of the
the customer, client or customer, client or intermediary (B2C or B2B or B2B2C).
intermediary? For example, the expression of benefits can be in terms
of cost savings, income generation,
new product development, security, added value for
the end user or opening a new revenue stream.
It’s also important to have numbers or statistics
(measurable stuff) that back up and validate what is
said to have been delivered.

7 Within a B2B context, Here your company or organization needs to get some
how did this affect the insight from the customer, client or intermediary that
customer or client’s validates the decision to use your company or
own customers? organization rather than a competitor.
This part of the case study is with quotes from the
customer or client’s own customers or clients and other
stakeholder groups.
This is often ignored or forgotten in case studies and
yet could be the most interesting bit.
Using these stakeholders’ own quotes will be powerful
(and permission from the customer or client will be
required).
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
173
Table 7.1 continued

8 (Where relevant) Where relevant, your company or organization may

what can the customer, have empowered customers, clients or intermediaries
client or intermediary to be able to do something that is important for them.
now do in terms of its Explain what this is.
own market segment This part of the case study is about delivering
that it couldn’t do a competitive advantage to customers, clients or
before? intermediaries or some other advantage that has value
for them.

9 (Where relevant) This is a forward-looking bit of the case study.

what are the future This can be described in terms of competencies,
opportunities for the capabilities, market position, market share, new
customer, client or product development, increase in productivity,
intermediary? decrease in risk or other such measurable benefits
that link back to the other parts of the case study.

10 (Where relevant) This is a more ‘sales’-orientated type of case study.

what experience and This bit could be a useful round-up of your own
capability does your competencies, capabilities, market position,
company or organization market share, new product development and other
now have as a result of meaningful ‘sales’-type messaging.
this work? This part of the case study ends on your company or
organization, so it’s much more selling focused.
Try to make this bit more future orientated.
Include contact details at the bottom.

11 How can all of the above There is a need to break away from linear thinking and
be encapsulated by a consider expressing the case study through the
photograph, video or medium of photography, video and film and not just
film? through the printed word.
This helps to add emotional intelligence in the way
the story is told.
It is the most powerful way to assist in getting
the audience to engage with the case study.

The likelihood of getting every single element of the case study template in
place will be a tall order, but even getting 50–70 per cent of it would be
a fantastic step forward in creating some really compelling content that can
be used as a media asset in both offline and online environments.
174 The Art of Influencing and Selling

Sales copy tips

Failure to plan is a plan to fail
The reality is you can’t get going unless you have a plan that you want to
follow and execute. Spending time thinking and planning will ensure that
the sales copy will work. Remember, you need to shift your point of view to
that of the recipient, and that takes some thinking and planning to do.

Look beyond your own ‘field of view’

Some of the best sales copy ideas may in fact not be in our own market
segment. They may be found in other markets, professions and sectors.
A good example is the impact that salespeople from a retail background
have had on the selling of professional business-to-business (B2B) services.
Good practice exists in a variety of places – go seek it out, give it a twist and
apply it in your field. You could be surprised as to the results you can achieve
simply by looking outside your own field of view.

Be authentic, above everything else

There’s a lot of wisdom out there about writing great sales copy – often
written by those who’ve been doing it for years both offline and online. On
the other hand, you’ve got to develop your own style. You have to find the
voice of your company or organization. Your copy should reflect your com-
pany’s or organization’s personality, to be the best it can be.
Remember, more than ever, it’s about being 100 per cent authentic. This
is what this chapter is all about. Don’t try to be something you’re not.
Apart from the fact that it won’t work, you can damage your credibility
and destroy your reputation, perhaps irreversibly.
The oil company BP learnt this lesson the hard way – a huge amount of
time, effort and resources was spent globally giving it the ‘green makeover’.
It even changed its logo in 2000 to one that looked like a sunflower in
an attempt to win over environmentally conscious consumers, at a reported
cost in excess of US$25 million. Mind-blowing. Then a decade later, in 2010,
the company was held responsible for creating the worst oil spill in US
history, which turned stretches of the Gulf of Mexico into a lifeless ocean.
Heart-breaking.
And it wasn’t just a matter of human error, although that did play a part.
It was a corporate culture where the interests of shareholder return were
more important than saving the environment, no matter what the company
was saying publicly about its environmental record. No amount of copy
on ‘protecting the environment’ could reverse the environmental disaster
that had its fingerprints all over it. BP had tarnished its reputation, some say
to such a degree that it would take a lifetime to put the record straight.
Actions will always speak louder than words.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
175
Talk to an audience of one
Forget target audiences, stakeholder groups, target customers or typical
buyers, visitors, viewers or listeners. You’re not writing for the masses. You’re
writing for a human being: the reader, the recipient of your communication,
a real person.
Remember, it’s a conversation, in the first person, so use colloquial lan-
guage to express ideas, thoughts and information. By paying importance to
the tonality of the language you use, you’ll be much more effective in getting
your sales messages across. And, provided you can write simple sentences
in plain language, grammar shouldn’t be an issue for your copywriting.
Andy Maslen says:
You can write copy that’s hard-hitting, persuasive, even entertaining and
also avoid thrashing the English language. But maybe there’s something
that matters even more than correct English, something to do with the
fundamental truths about your product or service. Like is it any good? Do
enough people want to pay for it? And, ultimately, will your revenues
from selling it outweigh your costs in producing and promoting it?

Mirror and match

This is a technique most commonly associated with body language but can
apply equally to creating sales collateral, as pictures of the type of people
you’re aiming to connect with need to be present visually amongst the words
of the copy. The connection has to work on both a rational and an emo-
tional level. Visual images, such as photography, can be immensely powerful
if used appropriately.

Call to action (CTA)

In the past, copywriters tended to put the CTA at the end of the sales
brochure, sales letter or press advertisement. They’d taken the reader on
a journey and at the end of this was ‘payback time’ – to get something in
return. This may have been getting the reader to complete a tear-off strip
and stick it in the postbox.
As we said in other places in this book, the art of closing a sale is orches-
trating a series of small closes, so there’s no reason why a CTA must always
come at the end of the sales copy. It could come at the beginning, in the
middle or even in the headline. You could pepper your copy with CTAs.
Andy Maslen says:
Just as the CTA seems to go last, it often gets written last. But maybe
that’s not such a good idea. After all, you’re tired… and elated… the
copy is almost finished. You can go home – just as soon as that pesky
CTA is done. So you dash off an ‘order now’, save and close and you’re
clear. But this is the whole point of the sales letter, flyer or web page.
176 The Art of Influencing and Selling

This is where it all comes down to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from your reader.
So it needs the most effort, creativity and precision to get it right.
In an online environment, a call to action isn’t as simple as including your
phone number in the body of the e-mail or giving the recipients lots of links
to click. They need directions and compelling reasons for taking specific
actions, particularly if these incur time and money.
It’s important that any CTA looks like ‘action’. For example, simply
stating ‘Click here’ in the body of e-mail copy isn’t likely to get a higher
response rate than if you’d said ‘Contact us today!’
Words are the building blocks to an effective CTA, and the quantity and
type of words you use have a significant impact on the response rate.
The most effective way to write a CTA is to start with one or more action
words: verbs that propose a specific task that you want the recipient to
do (Table 7.2).

Table 7.2  erbs that influence the recipient to accept a call to action
V
(CTA)

Call to action Words that can influence this behaviour

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Avoid clichés ‘like the plague’!

It’s a bit like seeing someone with a poorly matching shirt and tie – you
know it doesn’t work but you haven’t the heart to tell him. You just
avoid sitting next to him.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
177
If your copy is to be the best dressed in town, then avoid the most com-
monly used clichés in sales copy (Table 7.3) and rewrite the cliché in plain
language.

Table 7.3 Clichés to avoid in sales copy

Let me be honest Just between us Step change

Honestly speaking Let me be sincere What do I have to do to get
you to say yes?
If I were you… I know We need to look at this
holistically
To tell you the truth You may have heard this This is a game changer
before
Let me be frank It’s never too late It’s a win–win
Trust me Paradigm shift Exclusively for everyone

Avoid emotional adjectives

Poor copywriters leave all the hard work of bringing their product or service
to life to the reader by using emotional adjectives like ‘super’, ‘outstanding’,
‘fabulous’, ‘important’, ‘exciting’ and ‘great’. If you want to tighten up sales
copy, it’s best to expunge emotional adjectives altogether. Instead focus on
choosing the precise noun rather than qualifying vague or abstract ones
with adjectives.
A supreme example of the use of language in a precise way is the telegram
British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill sent to General Alexander,
commander-in-chief in the Middle East, on 10 August 1942: ‘Your prime
and main duty will be to take or destroy at the earliest opportunity the
German–Italian army commanded by Field Marshal Rommel together with
all its supplies and establishments in Egypt and Libya.’ In the space of just
35 words, he’d packed in an entire campaign, from target to objectives and
timescale. As they say, less is more.
Whatever you’re selling online, make sure you write copy that engages
readers’ attention instantly. You don’t have time to warm them up. But that
doesn’t mean all sales copy must be short. Rather, it’s about losing a sen-
tence when one word will do.

Length matters
The perceived wisdom is that everything on the web needs to be short,
including sales copy, and that long sales copy doesn’t work. In fact, any
length of sales copy won’t work if it’s boring and dull and fails to capture
178 The Art of Influencing and Selling

and hold the attention and interest of the reader. Flip this on its head, and
long copy does work where it’s interesting and can sustain interest.
Long copy in a sales letter can be broken down into:
●● short paragraphs;
●● opening with a direct CTA appealing to the reader’s self-interest;
●● bullet points and cross-headings that break up the page;
●● press cuttings;
●● using the first person;
●● using lots of specifics; and
●● citing lots of benefits.

Like a fine wine, let your copy breathe

Resist the temptation to say absolutely everything possible about your pro­
duct or service. Leave something for the salesperson to explain!
Overloading sales copy and cramming it into the space of the media
you’re working in doesn’t make any sense. It could look like a mess.
Let the words and images work together in harmony. Give them space
and as a rule of thumb allow around 30 per cent of the available space to
be blank and design the sales collateral accordingly.
If you’re in the luxury product sector, copy tends to be in a classical serif
typeface such as Palatino or Perpetua. Use lots of white space and the best-
quality paper you can afford.

Use the power of the narrative

A story that brings to life the reasons why someone may want to buy your
product or service is one of the most powerful ways of getting your sales
messages across to a prospective customer or client. As discussed in
Chapter 6, storytelling in the way that Steve Jobs did is incredibly powerful
and memorable. All you need is a problem, a hero, a narrative of the journey
taken and a happy ending!

E-mail
One of the most significant challenges in using e-mail as sales collateral
is targeting recipients with highly relevant content. Get this right and the
return on investment is considerable.
Sending print newsletters and direct e-mails has long been a proven
method to stay in touch with customers, clients and prospects. According to
the US Direct Marketing Corporation, every US$1 spent on e-mail marketing
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
179
generates US$45.06 return on investment – the highest response rate for all
direct response methods.
With the right tool, not only can you create a newsletter within 30 minutes
or less, but you can also track:
●● who opened your message to find out who cares enough to read what’s
inside it instead of deleting it;
●● who clicked on any of the links that are inside your message to read
more or to place an order; and
●● which addresses are no longer valid so you can maintain a clean list.
Sue Coakley, senior director, customer contact strategy at Yahoo!, explains:
At the end of the day, we all need to drive revenue, but it may not be
the sole focus of every e-mail and I would argue it shouldn’t be
the sole focus of every e-mail that we send. We want to develop that
relationship because we know that when we build a relationship people
are more likely to respond when we want them to take action and
they’re less likely to simply tolerate or, worse yet, unsubscribe from
our messages.

Yahoo! (2012)
In order to engage with recipients of e-mail sales and marketing outbound
activities, Yahoo! pursues a three-pronged contact strategy (Table 7.4):

Table 7.4 Yahoo! Three-step contact strategy for e-mail campaigns

Step 1: Step 2: Step 3:

Build on the relationship Keep it relevant Respect recipients’
preferences

Why did they start the What do you know about Obviously honour their
relationship? them? preferences
Why do they use your Demographics? Do all you can to retain them
products or services?
What’s their end goal? Interests? Think about frequency
Continue to fulfil on that value Response behaviour Avoid permission creep
Surprise and delight Never assume what you Consider your message in
don’t know the larger context
Give your e-mail social legs Listen – both positive and
negative
What standard metrics
don’t tell you
Beyond the campaign
180 The Art of Influencing and Selling

●● Step 1: Build on the relationship. This involves thinking back to why

people started the relationship with you to begin with. It’s probably
because they had a very specific need. Did they provide the e-mail
address and are you building off that? For Yahoo!, it’s because
somebody signed up for a Yahoo! Mail account. ‘We should really
start and build that relationship first and foremost before we look at
expanding it further’, says Sue Coakley.
●● Step 2: Keep it relevant. This is probably one of the biggest buzz words
for e-mail marketers. The starting point for Yahoo! is finding out what
it knows about the consumers. Knowing your audience helps you to
understand your purpose. In the case of Yahoo! this is done through
data that’s been provided as well as through behavioural tracking on its
site. Another key strategy is listening as well as thinking beyond the
campaign.
●● Step 3: Respect recipients’ preferences. According to Yahoo!, you have
to do all you can to retain that permission. ‘It’s really permission to go
into someone’s inbox and doing that by thinking about things like
frequency. At Yahoo, that currently stands at no more than one e-mail
per user, week. That seems to be intuitively right, but also in terms of
both positive and negative metrics’, explains Sue Coakley.
The frequency that you send these messages will depend on your audience’s
ability to read each message and your ability to keep up with the ongoing
workload. As a rule of thumb, if you think you’ve got a busy audience,
don’t send too many messages. And if you don’t think you can maintain
consistency on a twice-monthly basis, then opt to send only one message
each month.

Typical uses for e-mail copy

You can use e-mail copy for exactly the same range of goals as you can for
a sales letter:
●● to generate sales enquiries;
●● to generate downloads for a free white paper or research document;
●● to generate a free trial of software products over a time period;
●● to make incremental sales to existing customers and clients;
●● to entice prospects to visit your website;
●● to get discounts and special offers;
●● to provide a voting mechanic;
●● to drive participation for promotions, prizes and competitions; and
●● to invite to a conference, seminar, exhibition or symposium.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
181
Response rates
It won’t come as any surprise that response rates are much higher when
using opted-in lists. E-mail copy is particularly suitable for campaigns where
you want to integrate the sales message with a website, for example for sign-
ups or registrations for an event, or you want to provide a free demo or
download of your software.

Subject line or headline

E-mail copy will live and die on the strength of the subject line or headline.
The reason is that the recipients will be looking at your e-mail message in
the preview pane and will be making an instantaneous decision to decide
whether to read the whole message by clicking it open. Alternatively, they
may have selected the reading pane and so will read the top of your message
without having to open the whole e-mail.
According to Andy Maslen, it’s clear why subject lines work in e-mails:
‘They need to appeal directly to the reader’s self-interest and promise a benefit
of some kind. They should be personal, urgent, practical, irresistible, specific
and related to the promise (not the picture if you have one).’
A headline in an e-mail can also be used as a hyperlink to a landing page.
It’s worth testing different sample subject lines in order to go with the one
that achieves the optimum result for you.
The following are known subject lines that could throw your carefully
crafted e-mail copy straight into the junk e-mail box:
●● vague headlines that look like spam e-mails, such ‘Hey you’ or
‘Check this out’;
●● a blank subject line (yes, really!);
●● symbols in the subject line;
●● words with all capital letters (offends ‘netiquette’ as it’s synonymous
with shouting at someone); and
●● the recipient’s first name in the subject line.
For a discussion on the legal restrictions on e-mail copy, refer to Guru in
a Bottle®’s Essential Law for Marketers (2nd edition).

Addressee of the e-mail

One sure way of getting the e-mail deleted is to address it to ‘Dear Sir or
Madam’ or ‘Dear Subscriber’ or ‘Dear Customer’. It must be personal and
have the person’s full name. A first-name reference when you don’t know
that person can come across as disrespectful and over-familiar.
182 The Art of Influencing and Selling

First paragraph
Get straight to the point. Don’t waffle. Think of it as your ‘elevator pitch’.

Subsequent paragraphs
Again, these need to be succinct.
If the main purpose of the e-mail copy is to promote your products or
services then you should consider including descriptions and images that
support the promotion and ensure that this is seen through the lens of the
customer or client.

Text links
Consider using clickable words and phrases that result in certain actions
when clicked, for example connecting to another piece of content or linking
to an e-mail address.
Text-only e-mails are preferred by customers and prospects who check
their e-mails on portable devices such as a smartphone. To avoid running
into technical difficulties, it may be possible to offer users the choice of
HTML or text-only versions, so that the integrity of the way the e-mail
looks and reads can be maintained.

Most commonly used fonts

The protocol is to use fonts that are easy to read (10 or 12 point) and will
ensure that the text displays properly when received (Table 7.5).

Table 7.5 Most commonly used fonts for e-mail copy

Arial Arial Narrow Calibri Comic Sans MS

Courier New Garamond Georgia Impact
Lucida Console Tahoma Times New Roman Verdana

Sign-off
Again, keep it friendly, open and personal by using a name rather than sign-
ing off as an organization.

Web page
Good copywriting existed well before the web was conceived or direct mail
had ever made its way through a single letterbox! In the opinion of Andy
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
183
Maslen it all comes down to one thing: ‘Good online copywriting must sell,
first and foremost. The paradigm may have changed from promotion to
education, but the underlying purpose remains unchanged. And that means
holding people’s attention and stopping them clicking off your site.’
Ideally, copy that will produce results will need to grab the attention of
visitors, hold their interest, create desire for the products or services that
you deliver, make them comfortable that they can do business with you in
confidence and finally lead them to take some action, such as landing on the
checkout page in order to complete a transaction.

Headlines
Whether writing copy for a website or a news release, the headline is pro­
bably one of the most important – and perhaps one of the hardest – things
to get right. A headline is basically the hook for what follows next. You’ll
quickly lose the interest of readers if the headline doesn’t grab them by the
throat.
Headlines do a number of really important jobs:
●● They encapsulate succinctly the main benefit of your product or service.
●● They give the visitor a compelling reason to read on.
●● They summarize the story they introduce.
●● They stop the visitor from clicking away.
●● They serve as a taster for your web page when Google or other search
engines deliver search results.
The most effective headlines share a number of characteristics:
●● They are short – 15 words or fewer is ideal.
●● They focus on benefits.
●● They speak directly to the reader.
●● They tell a story.
Online headlines are sometimes the only chance to hook your readers before
they click off somewhere more interesting. It helps to be really specific. For
example, if you have a service that could save home owners money on their
utility bills, you could just say ‘Save money on your utility bills’, but that
looks a bit lame. It’s much more powerful to add specifics into the headline,
such as ‘You could be saving $350 a year on your electricity bill.’
You don’t need to be a professional copywriter in order to write great
copy:
●● Write a list of all the ways your product or service makes your customer
or client’s life easier.
●● Rank these benefits in order of importance.
184 The Art of Influencing and Selling

●● Pick your strongest, most compelling benefit, which you’d choose if you
had only 10 seconds in which to tell the prospective customer or client.
This forms the basis of the headline.
●● Leaving aside the length or style of the headline, write a sentence that
explains how the benefit makes a difference for the customer.
●● Now remove as many words from the sentence as possible (called
tightening up).
●● Check that it addresses the reader directly.

Tone of voice
Tone of voice is incredibly important, as it can dramatically change the em-
phasis of the words being used. Think of it as the decor of your writing. It’s
not just about what you say, but also the way you say it.
On the web, it’s important to make visitors to your website feel welcomed
and reassured and make it easy for them to do business with you. The tone
of the language used has a major role to play in achieving this. On the whole,
the web is a more informal place in which to communicate. Bear in mind
people Skype, IM, chat, blog, twitter and re-tweet – all in a very informal
tone of voice.
You need to find your own distinctive tone of voice that’s real and reflects
your brand personality. The best way to achieve a realistic tone of voice is
to write copy the way you would have a conversation with a friend or an
acquaintance. It’s the style adopted by the Guru in a Bottle® Series, which
has gone down extremely well in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Online style
As a general rule, keep it simple! Use shorter words instead of long ones
when writing for the web. Keeping sentences shorter – aim for 10 words on
average – also improves the readability of your copy. ‘Get into the habit of
replacing long words with short ones and you’ll be writing crisper, punchy
online copy that engages your visitors and costs them less time and effort
to read’, says Andy Maslen.
One area where writing for the web and e-mail is distinctly different
to writing for print is in the length of paragraphs that appear on a website.
The difficulties of reading online mean avoiding overlong paragraphs that
could be overlooked or at worst prompt visitors to leave the page they’re on
in search of something more manageable.

Relevancy
More important than length of copy is the relevancy of the copy, as once the
purple prose starts to take visitors to a place they have absolutely no interest
in going they’ll soon click off.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
185
It’s usually best to avoid hyperbole and keep your writing as factually
based as possible – what’s known as evidence-based marketing. That way,
you can easily avoid making wild, unsubstantiated claims and in turn vastly
improve your reputation because you become a trusted source of informa-
tion rather than trying to push a product or service irrespective of the con-
text that the prospect will be facing.

Doing business with confidence

This is particularly important if the website is expected to take orders – before
customers click through to check out, they need to be reassured they can do
so with confidence.
Given the numerous web scams, many brand owners treat security as
a major part of the customer experience and have clear, express security
policies that are prominently displayed, which help to engender confidence
for customers to do business with them. There are also data protection
requirements that must be observed. Brand owners such as eBay handle this
extremely well, and it’s worth visiting eBay’s website to take a look at how
they manage this part of the communication process.
For more information about legal requirements that websites need to
comply with, refer to Guru in a Bottle®’s Essential Law for Marketers
(2nd edition).

Testimonials and case studies

One of the most powerful ways to demonstrate what you deliver – as op-
posed to what you offer – is through the lens of your customers and clients,
and one of the most efficient ways to do this is through a testimonial or case
study.
A common mistake is to ask for an endorsement or testimonial from
customers or clients and find that (should they agree) it doesn’t actually
say very much as a piece of communication. Simply saying that the company
was ‘great to do business with’ doesn’t tell the website user why. Nor does
it deliver some of the key messages that you may wish to communicate to
your desired market and customer segments – about quality, service and
cost or indeed the way you dealt with problems when they occurred and
how these were resolved with the minimum of fuss. All of these elements can
help strengthen reputation, confidence and trust, and it’s a unique selling
opportunity too.
The best way to achieve this is to pre-draft testimonials or case studies –
keeping them factual – and get customers or clients to approve them. That
way, even if the customers make some amendments, you’ll end up with
a more powerful and useful piece of communication that’s more likely to
influence the way in which customers and clients see your organization.
186 The Art of Influencing and Selling

Contact information
It may sound like a small point, but it can be deeply frustrating for cus­
tomers if they want to talk to someone at your organization but there’s no
telephone number given. It’s all too easy to provide a contact e-mail address
or a web enquiry form but sometimes a phone call is all that’s required in
order to close a sale.
It’s also useful to have a link to frequently asked questions (FAQs) near
to where the telephone number is communicated on the site, as this may
alleviate the need for the call to be made in the first place.

Layout strategies
Research shows that visitors to a website tend to eyeball what’s written
at the top left of the screen if they read from left to right; they tend to skip
banners or what looks like advertising and don’t pay too much attention to
what’s written further down the screen. A key reason for this is that visitors
to a website are usually looking for something in particular and don’t want
to waste time searching for it.
It’s worth bearing in mind that not every word you’ll write will be read
so it’s best to help navigate the visitor with clear directional copy positioned
in high-visibility parts of the website. For example, using hypertext links
in the body of the copy creates more multiple paths for visitors to access the
information they’re looking for in other places on the website.
It’s best to use simple words, short headlines, short sentences and short para­
graphs. If you want to convey more detailed or complex copy about your
products or services, then think about providing a PDF download or a ‘printer-
friendly’ button so that it makes it easy for visitors to print off a document.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

It’s clear that search engines drive the internet and are the key information
aggregators for just about any subject under the sun. They are also the
primary conduit for customers and prospects who may be searching for
a particular product or service and are more likely to find you as a result
of a search rather than by typing your URL into the browser.
Search engines use mathematical algorithms to analyse a user’s question
or search query in order to provide web pages that attempt to most closely
answer the question or relate to the search term.
Given that we can’t control how search engines work, it’s important that
all commercial websites are constructed in such a way that web pages are
returned first (or on the first results page) for any relevant search, since most
users rarely look beyond the first page of search results and as a result you
may never be found.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical when planning and designing
a website. An optimized website will attract more traffic than its rivals because
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
187
it achieves naturally high search responses and as a result doesn’t need to
rely on paid-for search results in order to drive traffic to the site.
Even if you’re able to hard-wire SEO into your website, the effects of this
time and investment may not necessarily come through immediately and
may take between six and 12 months to be realized, as a website takes time
to register with all relevant search engines.
●● Take the longer-term view when engaging with SEO for your website.
There are no short-term fixes that will propel your website to the
number one spot, and in fact older websites tend to get higher rankings
than newer ones.
●● Track the number of unique visitors to your website as a result of
natural search results. Any half-decent web analytics tool will be able to
provide you with this data.
●● Track the number of key phrases that are driving traffic to your website.
●● Track the number of inbound links to your website.
●● Track the number of indexed pages by search engine.
●● Try to link traffic data with number of sales successfully transacted on
your website (where this is relevant).

Online newsletters
Let’s face it. Most online newsletters are nothing more than a glorified
advertorial that’s nakedly attempting simply to get you to buy something,
go to an event or subscribe to something, which will open up another screen
that will try to up-sell and cross-sell to you at the same time as asking for
your permission to opt in. While all of this activity can be rationalized on
the basis of trying to ‘sell’, it may in fact alienate a large percentage of those
potential customers and clients who don’t like to be sold to and in fact are
seeking insight and knowledge from an online newsletter.
The starting point is what’s in it for them. Why would they want to spend
any time reading your newsletter as opposed to doing something else on
a rainy Friday afternoon?

Value in the communication will sell it,

not making it a sales piece
The online newsletter should be ‘what it says on the tin’ and deliver topical,
well-observed, insightful knowledge and practice that demonstrate that your
company or organization knows what it’s talking about.
It’s more about influencing the way that your prospective customers
and clients will think in the future – and why they’d want to come and talk
to you – that will be the real power of an online newsletter.
188 The Art of Influencing and Selling

Too little thought goes into understanding what outcomes are required
from something like an online newsletter, and instead salespeople think it’s
to be treated like another piece of direct mail.

Typographical considerations
When it comes to the design and typography of an online newsletter, every-
one has an opinion but very few learn anything before offering their opin-
ion. Some will say they prefer light blue to light yellow, Times New Roman
looks terrible, and underlined words help to provide emphasis. Blah, blah,
blah. This level of ignorance makes even less sense given how people like
to obsess about style rather than substance.
Table 7.6 provides some general guidance on the use of typography and
layout.

Table 7.6 Typographical considerations for the online newsletter

Fonts Serif typefaces like Times New Roman are readable and are useful where
you need to have continuous text.
Sans serif typefaces like Arial and Arial Black are good for headings.
Don’t have more than two typefaces on the page – one serif and one sans
serif.
For continuous text, avoid upper case (although it’s acceptable for short
headings) and avoid italics, especially with small font sizes.
For added emphasis, consider choosing a different font instead.
Avoid underlining – it looks ugly in a newsletter.
Aligning text For continuous text, avoid centre or right alignment. If you justify text, it’s a
trade-off between look and readability. Don’t justify text that is too narrow.
Borders Don’t butt words up to lines, text boxes and cross-heads. Also, make their
thickness appropriate to the text they are near – only use thick lines with
large fonts.
Headings Keep these clean and preferably short.
White space Allow copy and pictures to breathe, and consider space as ‘thinking time’
for the reader.
Line length Avoid long lines of text. The eye gets weary reading them on-screen or on
a smartphone – a maximum of 12 words is about right.
Line spacing Use 1.5× spacing for continuous text, smaller spacing for headings that
stretch over more than one line, and smaller still for big headings.
Colour Consider colour contrast in order to create visual interest and also to help
contrast the reader navigate through the content of the newsletter.
Navigation Consider using on-screen turning page technology where the online
newsletter mimics the look and feel of a physical newsletter and is easy to
flip from one page to the next.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
189
In terms of the actual content of an online newsletter, the following points
should be observed:
●● Use simple, jargon-free and colloquial language.
●● Offer an industry perspective and latest statistics on changes happening
in that market segment.
●● Signpost the reader to other relevant resources.
●● Provide insight on issues and challenges faced by many customers and
clients and currently what’s being done to meet them.
●● Provide one or two case studies and testimonials that deliver key sales
messages through the lens of the customer or client.
●● Give an update on news, events and views.
●● Have a maximum of only 25 per cent of the space in the online
newsletter devoted to sales promotional copy.
●● Keep the tone of the newsletter open and friendly and invite feedback
and sharing of thoughts and ideas with the audience.
●● Think of changing the format for subsequent online newsletters to keep
it fresh, and consider using mechanics such as prizes, promotions,
competitions and awards that help to collect data on a permission basis,
provide a reason for the reader to return, and maintain the dialogue
with the reader via the online newsletter.
●● Consider using info graphics, data visualization, interactive charts,
drawings and photographs.
●● Include a picture and full contact details of the person with whom
readers can engage on any of the material presented in the online
newsletter.
●● Ensure that there’s a statement on data protection that’s written in
a friendly and jargon-free way.
For more guidance on data protection compliance, refer to Guru in a Bottle®’s
Essential Law for Marketers (2nd edition).

Google AdWords
Google AdWords are a paid-for advertising product and, as with any
other form of copywriting, the intention is to grab attention and influence
behaviour. The ads appear as four-line text items on the right-hand side of
the Google search results. Google works on the principle of relevance and,
depending on what users are searching for, Google only wants to return
websites and AdWords that specifically deal with what they’re looking for.
Given that you have to bid for the use of certain Google AdWords in
competition with other brand owners, you should only bid for the most
190 The Art of Influencing and Selling

specific and relevant keywords you can think of, and these must also be
included in your ad copy.
The major difference with other forms of online advertising is that the
brand owner only pays if the user clicks on the Google AdWords – referred
to as pay-per-click (PPC).

Importance of Google AdWords copy

The copy used for Google AdWords plays a vital role in the success of any
PPC campaign. There’s no guarantee that simply using the best keywords
and most compelling sales copy will increase the response rate of any PPC
campaign, as the Google AdWords may simply fail to deliver the customers
you’re looking for.
The following tips will dramatically improve your response rate and
chances of reaching your desired customer and client segments.

Google AdWords tip 1: Be specific

Don’t write generic ad copy for all your keywords. You should try to be as
specific as possible so that your Google AdWords can deliver the right
message to your desired customer and client segments.
For example, take men’s shoes. If you’re retailing shoes and you’ve dif­
ferent types of shoes in your inventory, you should make a few sets of key-
words for each of the different types of inventory that you have and then
write compelling Google AdWords for each of those sets. The best way to
do this is to have multiple ad groups for your different sets of keywords so
that you can easily write specific ad copies for the different ad groups.
Google has several utilities that can help you in this task, including
a keyword ideas tool that will allow you to put in the parameters you want,
and the tool will suggest keywords on the basis of what the competition
are using and the level of global and local monthly searches against those
most popular keywords (Table 7.7).
Many brand owners believe that copying Google AdWords of the top-
performing advertisers can make their PPC campaign a success. Wrong.
Certainly you can take ideas from your competitors while you’re writing
your Google AdWords copy. But blatantly copying a competitor’s Google
AdWords makes your Google AdWords insignificant. Many search queries
today show near-duplicate Google AdWords with the same title and some
minor changes in the Google AdWords body and a different display URL.
This is definitely not helping the brand owner, because users get confused
when they see the same kind of Google AdWords lined up in a column.
Users tend to go for the one that stands out and is different from the rest of
the group.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
191
Table 7.7 Keyword ideas

Keyword Competition Global monthly Local monthly

searches searches

office shoes Low 368,000 201,000

vans shoes High 673,000 201,000
dr martens High 1,500,000 301,000
hotter shoes High 90,500 74,000
wedding shoes High 823,000 201,000
new look shoes Medium 60,500 60,500
wynsors Low 49,500 49,500
doc martens Low 1,220,000 246,000
skechers High 1,220,000 135,000

Source: [Link] (accessed 18 August 2012)

Google AdWords tip 2: Highlight your unique selling

proposition (USP)
Given the high degree of commoditization in certain markets, brand owners
are often left fighting it out over price. In order to combat this downward
spiral, having a USP is a key offensive sales strategy in order to compete on
value rather than price.
Consider the following:
●● How different are your products and services compared with those of
your competitors?
●● What makes your product or service unique?
●● What benefit would the customer get after buying what you sell?
The Google AdWords chosen must encapsulate your value proposition and
ideally shouldn’t be capable of being easily replicated by your competitors.
They must be unique and something that your customers can relate to and
benefit from.
Some examples of popular USPs:
●● Olay: ‘You get younger-looking skin.’
●● Domino’s Pizza: ‘You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in
30 minutes or less – or it’s free.’
●● FedEx: ‘When your package absolutely, positively has to get there
overnight.’
In all of the above examples, all the USPs are pretty straightforward and
uniquely describe the value proposition in simple terms.
192 The Art of Influencing and Selling

Google AdWords tip 3: Don’t get carried away being too

creative in the copy
Advertisers often try to make their Google AdWords copy very creative, but
this doesn’t translate into a higher return in terms of PPC rates and sales
conversions.
Because of the nature of PPC ads, it’s very important for you to grab the
visitor’s attention right at the beginning. Think of a traditional Google
search page, for instance – when users perform a search, they’re presented
with a page full of blue-coloured links on a white background. They’re look-
ing for a particular solution to a problem and, even though you offer the
solution and you’ve put up your Google AdWords on the right-hand side of
the screen, the user may not be able to spot you. One reason may be that
your Google AdWords copy doesn’t include the words that users are search-
ing for and as a result this makes your Google AdWords irrelevant to their
search.
When you search for a term and you’re provided with 10 results, you
naturally go with the results that have exactly the same words of your
search query on them.
Google by default automatically bolds your searched keywords in the
search engine results page (SERP), so when writing your next Google AdWords
copy make sure you include your main keywords in the ad headline and ad
description so that they’re automatically bolded when users include those
keywords in their search query.
Having your keyword in the Google AdWords copy also makes your ad
more relevant and as a result delivers a better click-through-ratio (CTR).

Google AdWords tip 4: Call to action

Many brand owners forget to include a CTA in their Google AdWords.
Having a good CTA can increase your CTR and also increase your cam-
paign effectiveness.
Users need to know what’s in it for them if they click on the Google
AdWords. They’re already in a page full of related links that they were
searching for and you’re just one of those results. So, if you’re going to
attract them, you’ll have to make sure that they know what they’ll get
from your page.
For example, if users are thinking of buying car insurance, they need to
go to a destination where they can straight away get what they need: an
insurance quote. They don’t want to end up on a site where they’ll receive
an endless supply of insurance tips or articles. That’s not what they’re look-
ing for.

Google AdWords tip 5: Get to the point

You don’t have the luxury of a lot of space to write your PPC Google
AdWords. Google AdWords allows only 25 characters in your title and
35 characters each in the one or two description lines beneath it, so avoid
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
193
all the unnecessary words and fluff and include only things that add value to
your advertisement.
You’ll get only about 5 to 10 seconds before users abandon the page, so
you really need to grab their attention the first time they see your Google
AdWords. If you’re selling a product, you may want to give away the unit
price in your Google AdWords copy so that the users who find your product
affordable will click on your Google AdWords and the rest won’t – saving
you some money, as it won’t drive traffic that has a very low conversion
rate for you.
No matter how good and convincing your sales copy, the conversion
rate depends partially on how much money users can afford to pay at that
very moment. If they’ve a maxed-out credit card and your product costs
US$1,000, then your offer isn’t any good and their click would be of no
value to you.
It’s always good to tailor your offer according to the user’s query. For
example, if someone is looking for ‘cheap hotels’, you might want to high-
light the price factor in your Google AdWords copy. On the other hand, if
users are looking for ‘luxury hotels’, you might want to highlight some of
your premium facilities such as an outdoor heated swimming pool and an
award-winning spa.
So think of some offers and specific details that you can give away right
within your Google AdWords copy that will save users their time and your
money.

Google AdWords tip 6: Make sure your ad is formatted

properly
Typical mistakes include:
●● the title is not proper cased;
●● everything is written in small letters; and
●● spelling errors.
You only get a very small window of opportunity when it comes to grabbing
the attention of your customer or client via PPC, so make sure that the user
gets a good first impression when looking at your Google AdWords copy.
For example, capitalizing the first letter of each word is a common practice
that makes your ad copy look attractive. However, you can test with various
other methods and use the method that works best for you.

Google AdWords tip 7: Display the URL as part of your

ad copy
Another common mistake made by brand owners is to pay little attention to
the display of the URL as part of the Google AdWords copy, and yet this is
vital for the effectiveness of the ad as well as CTR. You can put absolutely
anything in your display URL, provided that the domain matches with the
194 The Art of Influencing and Selling

domain of the destination URL. No matter what your domain name is, you
can include your primary keyword with a trailing slash in your display URL
to ‘assure’ users that they’ll indeed go to the right page.
Try to use keywords in your display URL, if that’s possible – the page
doesn’t even need to exist on your website, as the display URL is for display
purposes only. You can choose your display URL to be whatever you want
and send users to your choice of destination – provided that both are under
the same domain.

Google AdWords tip 8: Make sure that your ad copy and

landing page are aligned
In the vast majority of cases the landing page will be prepared first before
you get on to write your ad copy. But sometimes brand owners forget what’s
offered on their landing page and write their ad copy from scratch. As a re-
sult, even good ad copy with a high CTR may fail miserably, because after
customers or clients go to the landing page they can’t find what the ad copy
has promised. You need to have some sort of correlation between your sales
copy on the landing page and your Google AdWords copy. One easy way of
doing this is to highlight and include your USPs and benefits in your landing
page that relate to the promise that you made in your ad copy.

Google AdWords tip 9: Take account of day and time for

running the ad campaign
Each market segment that you compete in is unique and has its own unique
web traffic pattern. For example, depending on the type of products and
services you’re selling, some days of the week may be better than others.
Equally, some times of the day may be better than others. A combination of
optimum days and times is likely to yield a higher CTR.
The default scheduling made by Google is to allow you to run your ads
every day of the week, or just on weekdays or weekends. This may be suffi-
cient for your purposes. Alternatively, it may be in your best interests to set
your campaigns up to run at dates and times of your own choosing and
spend more or less on specific days of the week or hours of the day. For ex-
ample, you may find that your company or organization’s web traffic and
sales are strongest during the week and sharply drop off over the weekend.
If this is the buying pattern you face, then you might want to set up your
campaigns to reflect these traffic flows so that when customers and clients
are online they can find your ads quickly and easily and you don’t have to
stretch the budget over gaps of time that bring you poor-quality traffic that
has a low CTR and poor conversion rate.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
195
Google AdWords tip 10: Keep the campaign constantly
under review
The entire success of your Google AdWords copy is dependent on the CTR
and conversion into sales and so it’s sensible to carry out some form of test-
ing of your ad copy:
●● Test your Google AdWords copy headline. Create a few variations of
the headline and see which brings you more CTR and more sales
conversations. Don’t get fooled by high CTR – high CTR doesn’t
necessarily mean that your ad is performing well. Rate of conversation
is what it’s all about.
●● Test different offers. Each of your ads might include an offer, and you
may create a few offers to see which one works the best. For example,
does an offer of ‘20 per cent off’ perform better than ‘qualify for an
immediate $50 discount’?
●● Test your USP. Sometimes even after you’ve identified a unique strength
of your product or service, it may not be the best one in terms of
converting interest into sales, so always test with different value
propositions and see which one works for you.
●● Run multiple split tests of your Google AdWords copy. Have at least
three ads set up in each ad group and run them for a considerable
amount of time before coming to a conclusion about their performance.
●● Make small changes at a time. For example, start with the Google
AdWords headline first. When you’re changing the headline, don’t make
any other changes. Run that test for a while and find out the best
headline that gives you a good CTR. Once you achieve an acceptable
result, move to the next item and test it thoroughly. Continue this until
you’ve refined what is working well. CTR is an important indicator for
your ad’s effectiveness because CTR is directly related to your ad copy
whereas conversion is only partially related. Conversion depends a lot
on your sales copy and landing page as well, so concentrating more on
CTR initially would be a better idea, and slowly you can work your
way up to increase your sales conversion rate.
●● Even the slightest of changes matter. You might not find all tests worth
doing, but you should know that even a single punctuation mark can
make a significant difference on your CTR.
●● You should make sure that you test every single dot in your ad copy
thoroughly. Some basic items to be tested include:
–– www versus non-www in your display URL;
–– different use of caps in your headline and description;
–– trailing dots (…) at the end of your ad copy; and
–– the use of other punctuation and special characters within the
Google AdWords copy.
196 The Art of Influencing and Selling

Sales letter
There’s an old saying in sales and marketing: if you try to sell to everyone,
you’ll end up selling to no one. No matter how universal your product or
service happens to be, customers and clients want to be able to feel you’re
connecting with them. Before you write a sales letter, stop. Think about the
person at the other end who’s going to receive it. Earlier we talked about
a market segment of one. Even in B2B sales and marketing, it’s a real person
who shows up to the sales meeting, reviews the products and services on
offer and ultimately writes the cheque.
‘Each of these people is a real person with a unique background, hopes
and dreams. Just like the path in life that led you to where you are now,
they’ve walked their own path’, observes British sales training guru Sean
McPheat.
The same principles that apply to an online newsletter apply to the con-
struction of the sales letter.
‘The sales letter is probably the most powerful piece of copywriting ever
to have been invented. By its very nature personal – if written properly –
it takes your sales pitch directly to each and every one of your prospects’,
observes Andy Maslen.
The reality is that most sales letters are junk mail that ends up in the
recycle bin.
As we’ve said earlier in this chapter, in order to improve the chances of
the sales collateral being read, there needs to be a strong narrative. Creating
a compelling story that delivers your key sales messages not only delivers
greater impact but also is more memorable for the recipient.

Print or e-mail version of the sales letter?

There’s no straightforward answer, and it really depends on whom you’re
trying to communicate with. Revenue per message is shrinking – whether
delivered by physical direct mail through the letterbox or delivered by
e-mail to an individual’s PC, laptop or mobile device. As a result, many
salespeople feel they must send more and more messages to compete.
Wrong. Volume is a detriment, not an asset. In the battle to win the hearts
and minds of recipients, relevance has become even more important in the
‘war of words’.
In many respects the sales letter – whether in physical or soft-copy
format – can be relatively quick and inexpensive to produce, but it’s often
hard to beat the odds of it actually being opened and read (Table 7.8).
From reviewing Table 7.8, it’s clear that typical response rates for any
type of sales letter are likely to be low, and they’re getting lower. One reason
why so many sales letters fail to drive sales is that they don’t cut to the chase
or get to the point fast. In this respect sales letters aren’t that different from
many other sales channels, such as e-mails, web pages or press ads.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
197
Table 7.8 Typical response rates for the sales letter

Type of sales letter Typical response rate What you can expect

Sales letter individually 6.7 per cent of the names 67 responses per 1,000 pieces
addressed to a named mailed to posted
recipient
Sales letter B2C campaign 7.1 per cent of those 71 responses per 1,000 pieces
mailed to posted
Sales letter B2B campaign 6.2 per cent of those 62 responses per 1,000 pieces
mailed to posted
Sales letter door drop to 5.0 per cent of those 50 responses per 1,000 pieces
households but not who receive the mail posted
named individuals
(otherwise known as
‘junk mail’)
Door drop to households 40 per cent is put in the Of the 60 per cent that does
but not named individuals recycle bin unopened get opened by the
(otherwise known as householder, 20 per cent
‘junk mail’) doesn’t get read
E-mail sales letter Open rates for segmented A carefully segmented and
campaign and named individuals named e-mail campaign will
versus non-segmented perform 20 per cent more
campaigns can vary as effectively in the first 30 days
much as 20 per cent

The ultimate sales letter will address the following questions that will be
in the mind of intended recipients:
●● What keeps them awake at night giving them indigestion, boiling up
their oesophagus, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling from the ‘can’t
sleep at night’ experience?
●● What are they afraid of?
●● What are they angry about?
●● With whom are they angry?
●● What are their top three daily frustrations?
●● What trends are occurring and will occur in their businesses or lives?
●● What do they secretly and ardently admire most?
●● Is there an inbuilt bias to the way they make decisions (‘System One’ or
‘System Two’ thinkers?)
198 The Art of Influencing and Selling

●● Do they have their own language or code?

●● Who else is selling to them, what are they selling to them and how are
they selling to them?

Product sales brochure

This tends to be the glossy, high-production variety of sales collateral where
the ratio of words to pictures, diagrams and graphics could be as high as
10:90, whereas an e-mail newsletter may have a ratio of 70:30 words to
pictures.
The product sales brochure tends to be less personal, although this can be
overcome if the tone of the sales collateral is open, friendly and engaging.
Car manufacturers spend what looks like a small fortune developing
beautiful-looking product sales brochures that give the prospective pur-
chaser strong emotional reasons for wanting to buy what is a high-ticket
item.
One major flaw in the whole process is deciding whether the product
sales brochure is actually required and how it will be used to drive sales by
those who receive it.
Not having clear, behaviour-orientated objectives can be a fatal flaw
in the thinking that sits behind the investment required to print a large
number of these glossy ‘vanity sheets’ that aren’t measured in terms of the
value they deliver to the company or organization. But that doesn’t mean
they can’t be.
A product sales brochure can be an appropriate piece of sales collateral
in a variety of contexts:
●● generating sales leads, for example for holidays abroad;
●● winning orders, for example, B2B markets such as expensive yachts;
●● driving free trials, for example test drives of the latest car model;
●● improving perception of the company or organization, for example
showing how it manufactures its products and the quality of raw
materials used;
●● gaining new members or supporters, for example a professional body,
university or private members’ club; and
●● providing something to salespeople that they can hand out with pride
at conferences, exhibitions, events and hospitality functions and to
senior-level individuals within ‘traditional’ market segments such as law,
accounting, medicine, insurance and other professions or in the luxury
goods market such as clothing, watches, hi-fi, jewellery, apparel and
high-end accessories where the expectation is to receive a well-designed
and high-end product sales brochure.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
199
International Chamber of Commerce
Code (2011)
Background to the Consolidated ICC Code (2011)
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Code sets the ethical stand-
ards and guidelines for sales and marketing, including the production of sales
collateral, around the world. Developed by experts from a wide range of
market and customer segments, the ICC Code (2011) is a globally applica-
ble framework that harmonizes best practice in sales and marketing from
the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. The ICC
Code applies to all sales and marketing communications in their entirety,
including all words and numbers as well as material originating from other
sources.
The Code is voluntary but has been incorporated by industry regulators
across the world. For example, in the UK, it’s been adapted by the Committee
on Advertising Practice to produce its own CAP Code, overseen by the
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
For a detailed explanation of the codes of practice that affect this area
of sales and marketing practice, refer to Guru in a Bottle®’s Essential Law
for Marketers (2nd edition).
The ICC Code is relevant for B2B as well as B2C sales and marketing
collateral and takes account of social, cultural and linguistic factors in the
production of such materials. For example, when judging communications
addressed to children, the ICC Code provides that their natural credulity
and inexperience should always be taken into account in any determination
as to the appropriateness of those communications.

Assumptions made by the ICC Code

The ICC Code makes a number of assumptions that are relevant when pro-
ducing sales collateral: from a B2C perspective, individual customers and
prospects are assumed to have a reasonable degree of experience, know­
ledge and sound judgement and to be reasonably observant and prudent
when making purchasing decisions; and, from a B2B perspective, companies
and professional organizations are presumed to have an appropriate level
of specialized knowledge and expertise in their field of operations.
These same assumptions are applied in the CAP, BCAP and Direct Market­
ing Association codes of practice in the UK.
The ICC Code is structured in two main parts: general provisions on
sales and marketing communication practice that contain fundamental prin-
ciples; and then a series of detailed sections that cover particular activities
such as direct marketing, sponsorship and sales promotion.
For a detailed explanation of data protection controls and laws, refer to
Guru in a Bottle®’s Essential Law for Marketers (2nd edition).
200 The Art of Influencing and Selling

General provisions of the ICC Code

Basic principles
All marketing communications should be legal, decent, honest and truthful,
should be prepared with a due sense of social and professional responsibil-
ity, and should conform to the principles of fair competition as generally
accepted in business (Article 1).

Decency
Sales collateral shouldn’t contain statements that offend standards of decency
currently prevailing in the country and culture concerned (Article 2).

Honesty
Sales collateral should be framed so as not to abuse the trust of consumers
or exploit their lack of experience or knowledge. Relevant factors likely to
affect consumers’ purchasing decisions should be communicated in such a
way and at such a time that consumers can take them into account (Article 3).

Social responsibility
Sales collateral should respect human dignity and shouldn’t incite or con-
done any form of discrimination, including that based upon race, national
origin, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation. In addition,
such activities shouldn’t without justifiable reason play on fear or exploit
misfortune or suffering, or appear to condone or incite violent, unlawful or
anti-social behaviour or play on superstitious beliefs (Article 4).

Truthfulness
Perhaps the most important principle in the ICC Code and one that goes to
the root of the production of sales collateral is that all such activities must
be truthful and not misleading (Article 5). Any form of sales material
shouldn’t contain any statement or claim that directly or by implication,
omission, ambiguity or exaggeration is likely to mislead the consumer.
The ICC Code spells this out in some detail, and although not exhaustive
the following is a useful checklist as to what ‘truthfulness’ means in practice
when writing sales materials:
●● Characteristics of the product that are material in influencing the consumer
to make a purchase, for example the nature, composition, method and
date of manufacture, range of use, efficiency and performance, quantity,
commercial or geographical origin or environmental impact must be clear.
●● The value of the product and the total price to be paid by the consumer
must be clear.
●● The terms for delivery, exchange, return, repair and maintenance of the
product must be clear.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
201
●● Other information, including terms of guarantee, intellectual property
(IP) rights and trade names, compliance with international and national
standards, awards, and the extent of benefits for charitable causes as
a result of making a purchase, must be truthful.

Use of technical or scientific data and terminology

In much the same way that Article 5 provides for ‘truthfulness’, this prin­
ciple (Article 6) captures situations where sales materials may ‘sail close to
the wind’ without actually being dishonest and may be ‘economical with the
truth’.
In practice, copywriters shouldn’t engage in the following activities:
●● Misuse technical data such as research results or quotations from
technical and scientific publications.
●● Present statistics in such a way as to exaggerate the validity of a product
claim.
●● Use scientific terminology or vocabulary in such a way as to falsely
suggest that a product claim has scientific validity.

Use of ‘free’ and ‘guarantee’

This is perhaps unusual, as it’s a specific rather than a basic point of principle,
but it addresses the temptation to use words like ‘free’ and ‘guarantee’ within
sales literature. In order to stem underhanded and oblique sales and market-
ing activities, the ICC Code provides that the term ‘free’, as in ‘free gift’ or
‘free offer’, should only be used in very limited circumstances (Article 7):
●● where the ‘free offer’ involves no contractual obligation whatsoever; or
●● where the ‘free offer’ involves only the obligation to pay shipping and
handling charges, which shouldn’t exceed the cost estimated to be
incurred by the marketer itself; or
●● where the ‘free offer’ is in conjunction with the purchase of another
product, but provided that the price of that product hasn’t been inflated
to cover all or part of the cost of the ‘free offer’.
Such a provision closes the door to many ‘sharp practices’ where the consumer
is led to believe that there’s a value-added benefit (for example, a significant
financial saving) when in fact it’s nothing of the kind and instead the copy-
writer is treating the consumer as gullible to such a tactic.
The provision also states that use of the term ‘guarantee’, ‘warranty’ or any
such expression in such copy shouldn’t give the impression that consumers
will enjoy additional rights over and above their statutory rights.
The terms of any guarantee or warranty, including the name and address
of the guarantor, should be easily available to the consumer, and any exclu-
sion clauses or limitations on consumer rights or remedies must be clear,
conspicuous and in accordance with national and international laws.
202 The Art of Influencing and Selling

Substantiation
Sales materials often include claims, descriptions or illustrations that are com­
municated to consumers in order to influence them in making an informed
choice. The ICC Code provides that such claims, descriptions and illustra-
tions should be capable of both verification and substantiation (Article 8).

Identification
About a decade ago or even longer it was the fashion to place ‘advertorials’
that were paid-for advertising but made to look like editorial with the veneer
of ‘independence’ about the content in the advertisement. Thankfully, this
type of sales copy is losing its appeal, as there should be clear water between
sales copy and genuine editorial content.
The ICC Code specifically states that such sales copy should be clearly
distinguishable as such. When paid-for sales copy appears in a medium
containing news or editorial matter, it should be readily recognizable as
a paid-for inclusion, and the identity of the brand owner should be immedi-
ately apparent (Article 9).
Such sales copy shouldn’t misrepresent the true commercial purpose and,
as a result, copy that’s promoting the sale of a product, for example, shouldn’t
be disguised as ‘market research’, ‘consumer surveys’, ‘user-generated con-
tent’, ‘independent blogs’ or ‘independent reviews’ where in fact these are far
from being unsolicited or independent points of view.

Identity
This is linked to Article 9, and the ICC Code provides that the identity of the
brand owner should be apparent in such sales materials and where appro-
priate should include contact information to enable the consumer to get in
touch without difficulty (Article 10).

Comparisons
The ICC Code provides that any comparison of a competitor’s products or
services in sales materials mustn’t mislead and must comply with the prin­
ciples of fair competition (Article 11). Points of comparison should be based
on facts that can be substantiated and shouldn’t be unfairly selected.

Denigration
The sales material shouldn’t denigrate any person or group of persons, firm,
organization, industrial or commercial activity, profession or product or
seek to bring it or them into public contempt or ridicule (Article 12).

Testimonials
As discussed earlier in this chapter, testimonials and case studies are some of
the most powerful ways of getting a message across to a desired market and
customer segment, as they have a quality of independence about them. The
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
203
ICC Code recognizes the potency of such content and provides that such
sales materials shouldn’t use or refer to any testimonial, endorsement or
supportive documentation unless it’s genuine, verifiable and relevant, as to
do otherwise would be dishonest (Article 13).
The ICC Code adds that testimonials or endorsements that have become
obsolete or out of date and therefore misleading through passage of time
should be removed from all sales and marketing collateral.

Environmental claims
Given the increased importance of environmental issues within a sales
context, the ICC Code was updated in line with international standards.
Copywriters need to ensure that any environmental claims or messages
made in the sales literature hold up to the basic principles of truthful, honest
and socially responsible communications and avoid misleading consumers.
Whilst the principles in the ICC Code appear simple, applying them to make
new environmental claims, often based on terms that aren’t universally under­
stood, is much more complicated. ICC guidance maps that process for com-
panies and provides a standard for brand owners to evaluate such claims should
they be challenged under national and international laws and regulations.
An environmental claim refers to any claim in which explicit or implicit
reference is made to environmental or ecological aspects relating to the pro-
duction, packaging, distribution, use or disposal of products.
The ICC Code guidance on use of environmental claims includes:
●● ensuring that all statements and visual treatments don’t mislead,
overstate or exploit consumers’ concern for the environment;
●● avoidance of general claims like ‘environmentally friendly’, ‘green’,
‘sustainable’ and ‘carbon friendly’ unless there’s validation of such
claims against a very high standard of proof;
●● presenting qualifications in a way that is clear, prominent,
understandable and accessible to consumers;
●● presenting improvement claims separately so it’s clear whether each
claim relates to the product, an ingredient of the product, the packaging
or an ingredient of the packaging; and
●● the inappropriateness of emphasizing a marginal improvement as
a major environmental gain, highlighting the absence of a component
that’s never been associated with the product category, or making
a comparison with a competitor’s product (unless a significant
environmental advantage can be verified).

Portrayal or imitation of persons and references to

personal property
The roots of this principle lie directly in the need to protect the personal
privacy of citizens, and the ICC Code provides that sales materials shouldn’t
204 The Art of Influencing and Selling

portray or refer to any persons, whether in a private or a public capacity,

unless prior permission has been obtained; nor should such material convey
the impression of a personal endorsement of the product without prior
permission having being sought in the first instance (Article 14).

Exploitation of goodwill
In the same way that Article 14 is a principle about respect for privacy, the
ICC Code on exploitation of goodwill prevents any unjustifiable use of
a name, initials, logo and trademarks of another company, brand owner or
institution (Article 15).

Imitation
Sales materials shouldn’t in any way take unfair advantage of another’s
IP rights or goodwill in the absence of consent (Article 16). This principle
effectively forbids copycat sales materials, as there may be an action in law
for passing off.
For a detailed explanation on the tort of passing off, refer to Guru in
a Bottle®’s Essential Law for Marketers (2nd edition).
Sales materials shouldn’t imitate those of another brand owner in any way
likely to mislead or confuse the consumer, for example through the general
layout, text, slogans and visual treatment.

Safety and health

Sales literature shouldn’t without justification on educational or social grounds
contain any visual portrayal or any description of potentially dangerous
practices or situations that show a disregard for safety or health as defined
by national laws and standards (Article 17). For example, a sales brochure
for a range of children’s trampolines with children playing on the products
should be shown to be under adult supervision, as the activity involves
a safety risk that could potentially pose a hazard for children if they are not
supervised by an adult.

Responsibility
Observance of the rules of conduct laid down in the ICC Code is the primary
responsibility of the brand owner. Other parties also required to observe the
ICC Code include copywriters and subcontractors (Article 23), who should
also exercise due care and diligence in the preparation of sales material.
Employees of any of the above who take part in the planning, creation
and publication of such materials are also responsible – commensurate with
their pay grade – for ensuring that the rules of the ICC Code are observed
and should act in the spirit and letter of the ICC Code.
 How to Write Effective Sales Materials
205
Effect of subsequent redress for contravention
Subsequent correction and appropriate redress for a contravention of the ICC
Code by the party responsible are desirable but don’t excuse the contravention
of the ICC Code (Article 24).

Implementation
The ICC Code and the principles enshrined in it are typically adopted and
implemented nationally and internationally by the relevant local, national
or regional self-regulatory bodies (Article 25).

References
Books
Kennedy, D (1990) The Ultimate Sales Letter, Adams Media
Kolah, A (2013) Essential Law for Marketers, 2nd edn, Guru in a Bottle®,
Kogan Page
Maslen, A (2011) The Copywriting Sourcebook, Marshall Cavendish Business
Maslen, A (2011) Write to Sell, Marshall Cavendish Business
Mitchell, A (2001) Right Side Up, HarperCollins Business
Moon, J (2008) How to Make an Impact, FT Prentice Hall
Zyman, S (2000) The End of Marketing as We Know It, Harper Business

Websites
A best-practice guide to e-mail sales and marketing: [Link]
(accessed 15 August 2012)
A good example of handling data protection issues on a website:
[Link] (accessed 16 August 2012)
For a discussion on e-mail sales copy: [Link] (accessed
15 August 2012)
Information on Google AdWords: [Link] (accessed 18 August
2012)
US Direct Marketing Corporation: [Link] (accessed
18 August 2012)