| |
| |
|
Copywriting Information |
|
|
|
5 Rules for Effective Written Sales Communications
Most salespeople have great ideas, but when it comes to putting those ideas on paper for their prospects, they ramble on for pages and quickly lose their readers' interest. Why do brilliant salespeople often have such a difficult time writing effective sales materials? Quite simply, these professionals haven't mastered the 5 rules of effective written business communications. Unfortunately, few salespeople receive formal training on how to write. While they may have taken a few writing courses in college, such courses don't adequately prepare people for real-world business writing. But with the proliferation of e-mail and sales-oriented web sites, writing skills are of paramount importance in today's business landscape. In fact, when your written documents get to the point quickly and effectively, you will turn more prospects into clients, thus increasing your bottom line. Following are the 5 rules of written sales communications that all salespeople need to know. Master them and watch your sales figures soar. 1. Know the specifics of your audience. Just as you would tailor your message depending on whether it was going to employees versus prospects, you also need to tailor your message to your clients' demographics. For example, if you're writing promotional materials for your product or service, and the majority of the people who do business with you are older, well-established professionals, you'll want to highlight the product or service's safety features, reliability record, or guarantee. However, if your main clientele were younger Gen Y types, you'd want to emphasize product or service's trendy image, quick results, or easy to use/understand features. Do a survey of your most loyal customers to determine which demographic gives you the most business. Also, keep track of those who visit or call your business, even if they don't buy from you. Really get to know who walks through your doors, find out what's important to them, and then tailor your message appropriately. 2. Organize your material according to the way your reader thinks about the subject. Realize that not everyone thinks like you. So just because you want your message to be organized one way does not mean your customers would agree. For example, one company created a free informational booklet about their product and organized it so that the product's most popular features appeared first. When customers still called with questions that were clearly answered in the text, the company was stumped as to why their customers weren't reading the booklet. After interviewing some of their customers, the company discovered that their customers found the booklet confusing. They wanted to see the features explained alphabetically, not in order of most popular. The better you know who your clientele is, the better you can organize your information to meet their needs. Get inside their heads and discover how they think about your product. Do they typically want to know bottom line price first, and then want to know the features and benefits? Do they tend to think testimonials are more important than facts? When you understand how your customers think about your product, you can more easily present your information in a way that's logical to them. 3. Write to express, not to impress. The more successful a salesperson is, the more often he or she thinks that big words and long documents impress people. In reality, just the opposite is true. People who try to write with the hopes to impress others with their knowledge only accomplish one thing-they lose the reader! Examine each marketing piece you write and distill its core message or purpose down to one or two sentence. If you can't do that, then your piece is not focused. If that's the case, then go back to each paragraph within the piece and try to condense each down to one or two sentences. String those new sentences together, and then pinpoint your marketing piece's purposes. That's the core message you want to express! Rewrite the piece with the core message in mind, using common, everyday language. Remember, true genius is when you can explain your idea in such a way that a five-year-old child can understand it. 4. In messages containing both good and bad news, give the bad news first. At some point, every salesperson will have to deliver bad news to a customer. Whether a particular feature isn't available in their favorite product or the customer's interest rate will be higher than expected, occasional bad news is a fact of life. Whenever you communicate bad news in writing, state it first, and then counter it with a bit of good news. For example, in a follow-up letter to a prospect you could write, "After checking with our warehouse, I discovered that the Widget 2000 doesn't come in red. It does, however, come in the larger size you requested and you can have it delivered by Friday." By ending with the good news, you take the sting off the bad news and leave your reader with a positive image. 5. Write colloquially when appropriate. People like to read documents that sound as if the message is coming from a real person, not a formally trained Ivy League scholar. If you write too formally, you'll quickly lose your reader. Have you ever reread your own writing and said, "It sounds all wrong!"? That's because the tone of your writing was likely wrong. Determining your tone is important, because a follow-up letter should not have the same tone as web copy. Most salespeople try to use an excessively formal tone in all their writing as a way to show their expertise. But realize that excessive formality often comes from a writer who is insecure with his or her authority. By using an overformal tone-complete with many large words, long sentences, and technical terms-the writer attempts to mask his or her insecurities. Most prospects don't want to do business with someone who is insecure, so keep the tone of your writing colloquial and approachable. Writing for Profits The more effectively you write, the more business you'll gain. So no matter what you're writing, whether it's a sales letter or a brochure, always keep the 5 rules for effective written sales communication in mind. Remember, your ability to write clearly and succinctly will make your sales pieces stand out, and will enable you to win the deal. About the Author:
MORE RESOURCES:
Copywriting - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
5 Deadly Copywriting Mistakes That Kill Sales Chances are that you are making many, if not all, of these 5 copywriting mistakes. I call them "deadly" because theyre killing your sales and your profits. How You Can Become A Freelance Business Plan Writer As with any business, becoming a freelance business plan writer can be a challenge. The first challenges involve factors such as cash flow, getting clients, and maintaining some sort of order. A Writers Secrets Every person has secrets that only he or she knows, secrets that are not shared with anyone, not even the most intimate friends, partners, even soul mates. These secrets may be righteous or sinister, yet for reasons, often unknown, they are never revealed to any other person. Freelance Writers: Double Your Income Freelance writers are a strange group of people when it comes to running their own businesses.They are outspoken and enthusiastic while selling their clients' products and services, but are hopelessly shy and reticent about blowing their own horns. 10 Tips for Writing Effective Web Copy On the Internet programmers and designers rule, not the writer. Yet words drive targeted traffic to your site, carry content, make the sale, convey marketing messages, persuade people to buy and make the difference between your site's success or failure. Sticky Homepage Copy in 30 Seconds Yes indeed, that's all you've got, 30 seconds to make your website visitors decide to stick around.. Prevent Procrastination With Positive Pressure My wife and I recently bought a house.It's currently being built and moving day is slated for December. Internet Marketing 102: Copy What Works Internet Marketing- Forget the experts, latest software program or even that book that someone is selling to get on the "best seller list" and the 200 free ebooks they are offering you. Here is what REALLY works, and it's something that you learned in kindergarden. Freelance Copywriting Advice #1: Take the Scary Jobs From time to time you will be faced with an opportunity that looks downright scary.The temptation is to think, "Hey, that's way outside my level of expertise. 7 Formulas for Articles That GET READ! Many of us have been asked to write an article at one time or another. Maybe it's a contribution to the company newsletter. Why Is FREE The Most Powerful Marketing Word You Can Use? As the famous cowboy Will Rogers once said, "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there".So what does that have to do with "FREE"? Quite a lot really. How To Find Freelance Copywriting Jobs Your goal is to land a few nice, secure freelance copywriting jobs, but how do you get them? The most important factor in finding these jobs is that you pursue the job you are looking for with all of your ducks in a row, so to speak. Here are a few things you need to do in order to get the freelance copywriting jobs that you have been looking for. Professional Copywriting Services - How to Provide Your Own Just because you're running a small business doesn't mean you have to run an amateur business. People judge the professionalism of a small business by many things including: the quality of the product or service offered; the dress code of the sales people; the location and decor of the business premises and; the quality of their written material. When Panic Attacks Writers If you write for a living, you deal with deadlines. Sometimes you will have several jobs on your plate at the same time. Its Time To Start That Swipe File Just as great fiction is an art, so is great copywriting. Beneath the art, however, there's a foundation of basic knowledge and skills. Copywriting Makeover: Search Engine-Friendly Can Also Mean Visitor-Friendly When it comes to search engine optimization, copywriting plays a big role. You want to have excellent copy that appeals to both your visitors and the engines in order to create pages that will rank highly. Bullshit Avoid the use of the word Bullshit It is important in this new paradigm of political correctness to tone down the language a bit. In this present period if you use such words like Bullshit, even when you are describing something that definitely is complete and total BS; it makes you look just as bad as what ever you are describing. Three Steps To Pump Up The Drama In Your Copy All the world's a story. Video games have storylines; newspapers report stories; country music lyrics tell a sad tale. Your USP is Useless One of the keys to writing good marketing copy is to differentiate your product or service from the competition with an effective selling point. And it is on precisely this element that many otherwise competent writers flounder and flop - and so does their copy. 3 Copywriting Tips - How To Edit For Mass Appeal! Web copy that's intended to sell or generate leads needs to quickly reach out and grab attention and build rapport with a target audience. You can connect with your audience more effectively if you understand something about how people process information, and how they think.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
