Now before he starts a letter, he calls to mind someone to whom he has sold a similar tract in the past; he remembers how each argument was received; what appeals struck home and then, in his letter, he talks to that man just as earnestly as if his future happiness depended upon making the one sale.
The preparation to write the letter should be two-fold: knowing your product or proposition and knowing the man you want to reach. You have got to see the proposition through the eyes of your prospect. The printer sold his ink dryer because he looked at it from the angle of the buyer and later he sold real estate, but not until he covered up his own interest and presented the proposition from the viewpoint of the prospect.
Probably most successful letter writers, when they sit down to write, consciously or unconsciously run back over faces and characteristics of friends and acquaintances until they find someone who typifies the class they desire to reach. When writing to women, one man always directs his appeal to his mother or sister; if trying to interest young men he turns his mind back to his own early desires and ambitions.
Visualize your prospect. Fix firmly in your mind some one who represents the class you are trying to reach; forget that there is any other prospect in the whole world; concentrate your attention and selling talk on this one individual.
"If you are going to write letters that pull," says one successful correspondent, "you have got to be a regular spiritualist in order to materialize the person to whom you are writing; bring him into your office and talk to him face to face."
"The first firm I ever worked for," he relates, "was Andrew Campbell & Son. The senior Campbell was a conservative old Scotchman who had made a success in business by going cautiously and thoroughly into everything he took up. The only thing that would appeal to him would be a proposition that could be presented logically and with the strongest kind of arguments to back it up. The son, on the other hand, was thoroughly American; ready to take a chance, inclined to plunge and try out a new proposition because it was new or unique; the novelty of a thing appealed to him and he was interested because it was out of the ordinary.
"Whenever I have an important letter to write, I keep these two men in mind and I center all my efforts to convince them; using practical, commonsense arguments to convince the father, and enough snappy 'try-it-for-yourself' talk to win the young man."
According to this correspondent, every firm in a measure represents these two forces, conservative and radical, and the strongest letter is the one that makes an appeal to both elements.
A young man who had made a success in selling books by mail was offered double the salary to take charge of the publicity department of a mail-order clothing house. He agreed to accept—two months later. Reluctantly the firm consented.
The firm saw or heard nothing from him until he reported for work. He had been shrewd enough not to make the mistake of the printer who tried to sell land and so he went to a small town in northern Iowa where a relative owned a clothing store and started in as a clerk. After a month he jumped to another store in southern Minnesota. At each place—typical country towns—he studied the trade and when not waiting on customers busied himself near some other clerk so he could hear the conversation, find out the things the farmers and small town men looked for in clothes and learn the talking points that actually sell the goods.