An automobile dealer who knows the value of showing the man he writes a detailed picture of the machine, includes an actual photograph. Even the reproduction of the photograph is insufficient to serve his purpose. The photograph is taken with the idea of showing graphically the strongest feature of the machine as a selling argument, and illustrating to the smallest detail the sales point in his letter. Then, with pen and ink, he marks a cross on various mechanical parts of engine, body or running gear, and refers to them in his letter.
To carry the photograph enclosure a step farther, one dealer of automobile trucks illustrates the idea of efficiency. He encloses with his letter a photograph of his truck fully loaded. In another photograph he shows the same truck climbing a heavy grade. Then in his letter he says, "Just see for yourself what this truck will do. Estimate the weight of the load and then figure how many horses it would take to handle an equal load on a similar grade."
In the sale of furniture, especially, is the actual photograph enclosed with the letter a convincing argument. Fine carriages, hearses, and other high-grade vehicles are forcibly illustrated by photographs, and no other enclosure or written description is equally effective.
After description and visualizing—through the medium of circular and sample—comes proof, and this you may demonstrate through any means that affords convincing evidence of worth. The two best are testimonials and guarantees, but the effectiveness of either depends largely on the form in which you present them. Testimonials are often dry and uninteresting in themselves, yet rightly played up to emphasize specific points of merit they are powerful in value. The impression of their genuineness is increased a hundredfold if they are reproduced exactly as they are received.
An eastern manufacturer has helped the prestige of his cedar chests tremendously with the testimonials he has received from buyers.
Letters from the wives of presidents, from prominent bankers and men in the public eye he has reproduced in miniature, and two or three of these are enclosed with every sales letter.
An office appliance firm with a wealth of good testimonials to draw on sends each prospect letters of endorsement from others in his particular line of business. A correspondence school strengthens its appeal by having a number of booklets of testimonials each containing letters from students in a certain section of the country. The inquirer thus gets a hundred or more letters from students near his own home, some of whom he may even know personally.
A variation of the testimonial enclosure is the list of satisfied users. Such a list always carries weight, especially if the firms or individuals named are prominent. A trunk manufacturer, who issues a "trunk insurance certificate" to each customer, reproduces a score or more of these made out to well known men and submits them as proof of his product's popularity.
Another effective form of enclosure is a list of buyers since a recent date. One large electrical apparatus concern follows up its customers every thirty days, each time enclosing a list of important sales made since the previous report.
Another plan is that of a firm manufacturing printing presses. In making up its lists of sales it prints in one column the number of "Wellington" presses the purchaser already had in use and the number of new ones he has ordered. The names of the great printing houses are so well known to the trade that it is tremendously effective to read that Blank, previously operating ten Wellingtons, has just ordered three more.