What makes a reply to a sales inquiry work
Imagine you’re an engineer who has been shopping around for forged steel valves. You answered an ad in a trade magazine, and you’re checking the replies as they come in. Here’s one. How do you like it?
Dear Sir or Madam:
We received your recent inquiry through Chemical Equipment. Enclosed is literature on our valves for the chemical process industry.
Should this not be what you had in mind, do not hesitate to contact us with any specifications you might have. We will be glad to respond.
Sincerely yours,
Joe Jones, Sales Manager
XYZ Valve Corporation
For one thing, there’s no effort to tell you why XYZ Corporation’s valves are worth considering. It is not a sales letter at all. It’s just a response to your request for information. If you want to sell somebody something, you can hardly afford to make such a weak impression.
This type of letter is common. There’s a real tragedy here. Most businesses spend considerable time and money on ads and brochures, lavishing care on every word and every detail. Yet they hardly give a thought to the letter that goes with it.
But creative consultant Sig Rosenblum thinks that ignoring letters is a big mistake. He says that companies that pay painstaking attention to their ads can benefit equally by devoting attention to their letters. After all, Rosenblum says, ads follow a pretty standard routine. First comes the rough, then the comp, then the finished art. A letter can convey an idea as effectively and powerfully as an ad.
Don’t take my word for it. Test it for yourself. The next time you read a trade magazine, circle the numbers of some ads for products or services in which you’re genuinely interested. You’ll begin to receive a series of replies, many of which will be full of stuff like “enclosed please find” and “in response to your interest” and “pursuant to your request.” I think you’ll agree that the responses could have been a lot more creative.
Clichés like that don’t sell anything. The reason they don’t sell is that they take the place of the copy that would sell. Copy that sells is copy that discusses the reader’s problem and proposes a solution. While the clichés clutter up the letter, the hot lead grows cool and your chance to sell your product drops to zero.
Who writes these letters? Usually the product manager, or an engineer.
”We have copywriters for ads and brochures,” the theory goes. “It would be extravagant to give a routine job like letterwriting to a highly paid creative specialist.” This reasoning is wrong. Letters are the most demanding assignment of all. In a letter, words alone have to carry the whole sales argument.
Seven Pointers for Better Cover Letters
Seven pointers for better cover letters
What makes a cover letter work?
Basically, friendliness and politeness. Be helpful, and tell how you beat your competitors on speed, cost or quality. Here are seven tips.
1. Thank the prospect for the inquiry.
”Thank you for your interest in.. .” is the traditional way to start. Now a cliché, perhaps, but still required.
2. Stress one or two key selling points. Don’t recap what’s in your brochure. Brochures are longer lived than letters, and may miss some latebreaking news. So use the letter to pass along a case history of a new application, or a product improvement, or a plant expansion.
If you have more than two or three sales points, set them off with bullets or numbers. Here’s how the Spartan Co. does it.
Dear Mr. Guterl:
Thank you for your interest in Spartan’s Dry SO2 Scrubbing Systems for industrial and utility air pollution control.
Unique feature of Spartan Systems is that pollutants are removed as a free-flowing dry powder, so no sludge forms and no thickeners or clarifiers are needed.
Besides cleaner waste handling, Spartan Systems offer other advantages over wet scrubbers:
- less energy use
- lower operating and capital costs
- reliable low maintenance
- no reheat needed
An enclosed brochure explains how the Spartan Dry SO2 Scrubber works, and the area representative listed on the enclosed Spartan Reps sheet will be glad to answer your questions.
Sincerely yours,
Gary Blake, Product Manager,
Dry Scrubbing Systems
What is attractive about the Spartan letter? Notice how it highlights one principal feature, no sludge, with the others getting just enough mention to build interest for a request for the brochure. The Spartan letter is salesmanship.
3. Spell out the next step in the buying process. Make it as simple as you can. You want your prospect to act: to buy the product, order a brochure, or call you or your sales rep. Here is how a manufacturer of pelletizers for minerals handled it:
”The price of the pelletizer depends mostly on your volume, though capacity varies somewhat with the particulates involved. The best way to find out is to send us a random five-gallon sample of your product. We evaluate it, and report back. You’ll know the approximate size of pellets you can make and the quantity per hour. That gives us a cost estimate.
We then suggest one of four options: an exploratory test, a full-day run, or renting a production machine with option to buy or buying outright.”
4. Write conversationally. Remember that a letter goes from one person to another, not company to company. Think of the difference between ordinary and extraordinary salespeople. The big difference is in their approach. The best salespeople are warm, friendly, and always helpful.
So why shouldn’t your letters have those qualities, too?
The pelletizer note is a model for any letter. Casual, folksy, it sounds as if it were written by a human being. Good salespeople get interested in the other person. So do good letters.
Stale Phrases to Cut
Stale phrases to cut
The more you work at shaving off the “whiskers” - the “Dear Sir or Madams” and the old, tired stock phrases - the more real and human your letter will seem. You don’t want to appear a stuffed shirt, full of bureaucratic archaisms or starchy salutations.
So here is a list of ten to avoid.
”Enclosed please find.” That’s too fancy for normal conversation. Try “Enclosed is,” or “With this letter.”
”When time permits.” Nobody says it that way. Try “When you get a chance.”
”Please don’t hesitate to call.” Instead, try “Call and tell us how you feel about it,” or “If you need any more information, call.”
”We are this date in receipt of.” Better to say “we received.”
”As per your request.”
”Of even date.” “Today” or “today’s date” are both more natural.
”Pursuant to your orders.” “This is what you ordered” is more down to earth.
”Whereas.” How about “while”? Remember that you’re not writing an affidavit.
”Kindly advise.” Just ask for information. Don’t order people around.
”Hitherto, whereby, thereby, herein.” This kind of thing belongs to the days of writing on parchment with quill pens.
5. Writing to sell means focusing on the reader’s needs, not on how proud you are of yourself or your product. Remember the two magic words, “you” and “your.” Most sales letters are simply too technical and inside. Turning technical features into job benefits helps the reader serve his or her customers better, please the boss.
6. Be brief. Use short words, sentences and paragraphs. Long, unbroken text bores and intimidates.
Stripped of fancy language, clichés, and extraneous stuff, most information boils down to the fewest words. Take this two-paragraph letter from the Acme Slide Rule Co.
Dear Ms. Sherman:
Thank you for your interest in the Acme Slide Rule. Thousands of scientists, technicians and engineers throughout the world use the Acme.
Acme slide rules cost $10.00 each under 100, and $8.00 each for 100 or more. Just send us your check or money order, and we will handle your order promptly.
Cordially,
S.D. Jameson
Customer Service Representative
7. Make your letter look professional. Type it on a good electric typewriter.
Proofread it carefully for spelling, punctuation, grammar and content. Correct every error.
Or run your letter off on quality business letterhead by quality offset.
A Word on Reply Cards
A word on reply cards
Along with the brochures and cover letter, the package needs a reply element. It could be a spec sheet, an order form, or a questionnaire called a bounce-back card.
A bounce-back is a postage-paid card returned to the company that ran the ad. The prospect qualifies himself. In answering the questions, he typically tells his name and title, phone number, the size of the company, when he plans to buy, who makes the buying decision, which competitors he’s been using. Also, he can indicate whether he’d like a call from a sales rep.
There are three main ways to design a bounce-back. One is as a separate card. Another is a tear-out bound into the brochure. And a third is to combine card, letter and catalog on a single sheet.
Robert L. Sieghardt, president of Professional Sales Support, which screens leads by phone, says bounce-back is integral to fulfillment if you don’t intend to contact every respondent personally. Sieghardt says to expect about 55% of your respondents to return the bounce-back once you add three follow-up mailings to the first mailing.
Some shops send only the bounce-back card, no literature, to screen out students, competitors, brochure collectors and time-wasters. Critics say this only delays getting the information in front of real prospects and adds an unnecessary step.
Larry Whisehant, advertising manager of Koch Engineering, a chemical equipment maker, takes a strong view of this practice. In his view, withholding the brochure from the package actually kills response, because the literature the prospect asked for is the most important part of the response package.
Sieghardt agrees: card-only screening makes the prospect do the job the manufacturer should do.
Advertisers will never fully agree on the perfect fulfillment package. But one thing is clear: tossing a brochure in an envelope with a hasty note wastes a chance to sell.
The whole package must drive toward the ultimate purchase.
About Delancey Street
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