PART V—WRITING THE SALES LETTER—CHAPTER 17
Comparatively few propositions can be sold in the first letter; in most campaigns it is enough to stimulate a man's interest and get him to reply. This chapter gives specific schemes that have proved successful in pulling answers—in making an opening for the heavy artillery of the follow-up
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Think what a problem you would have if you started out as a salesman to sell a certain article with no definite idea of where to find your prospects. You might interview a hundred men before you found one who was interested. That would be pretty slow and pretty expensive selling, wouldn't it?
And think what it would mean if you were to send out broadcast a thousand expensive booklets and follow-up letters only to receive one reply from the one man with whom you effected a point of contact. That, too, would be a prohibitively costly method of selling.
Yet one or both these methods would in many cases be necessary were it not for the inquiry-bringing letter. The inquiry letter is a "feeler"—the advance agent of the selling campaign. It goes broadcast to find and put its finger on the man who is interested or who can be interested, and his reply labels him as the man whom it is worth while for your salesman to see, or, who is at least worth the expense and endeavor of a follow-up series.
The inquiry letter is like the advertisement which asks you to send for a catalogue or booklet. The advertisement writer believes that if you are interested enough to write for the booklet, you will be interested enough to read his sales letters, and possibly become a purchaser. It is the same with the inquiry-bringing letter. It is simply a sieve for sifting out the likely prospects from the great mass of persons, who for many reasons cannot be brought around into a buying mood concerning your proposition.
The great advantage of the letter which induces the recipient to express his interest in an inquiry, is that you not only make him put himself unconsciously under an obligation to read further details, but you give time for the thoughts that you have started to get in their work.
The fact that a man has decided to ask for more information and has put that decision in writing is of considerable psychological value.
The one thing the salesman hopes to find, and the one thing the letter writer strives to create, is a receptive mood on the part of his prospect. The moment a man answers the inquiry-letter, he has put himself into a frame of mind where he waits for and welcomes your subsequent sales talk.