Some of the correspondence schools understand how to work in persuasion cleverly and effectively. Here is a paragraph that is dignified and persuasive:
"Remember also that this is the best time of the entire year to get good positions, as wholesalers and manufacturers all over the country will put on thousands of new men for the coming season. We are receiving inquiries right along from the best firms in the country who ask us to provide them with competent salesmen. We have supplied them with so many good men that they always look to us when additional help is required, and just now the demand is so great that we can guarantee you a position if you start the course this month."
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Persuasion plays a small part in selling general commodities, such as machinery, equipment, supplies, and the articles of every-day business, but correspondence courses, insurance, banking, building and loan propositions and various investment schemes can be pushed and developed by an intelligent use of this appeal.
Merged with the persuasion or closely following it should be some inducement to move the reader to "buy now." Description, explanation, argument and even persuasion are not enough to get the order. A specific inducement is necessary. There are many things that we intend to buy sometime, articles in which we have become interested, but letters about them have been tucked away in a pigeon-hole until we have more time. It is likely that everyone of those letters would have been answered had they contained specific inducements that convinced us it would be a mistake to delay.
In some form or another, gain is the essence of all inducements, for gain is the dynamic force to all our business movements. The most familiar form of inducement is the special price, or special terms that are good if "accepted within ten days." The inducement of free trial and free samples are becoming more widely used every day.
The most effective letters are those that work in the inducement so artfully that the reader feels he is missing something if he does not answer. The skillful correspondent does not tell him bluntly that he will miss the opportunity of a life time if he does not accept a proposition; he merely suggests it in a way that makes a much more powerful impression. Here is the way a correspondence school uses inducements in letters to prospective students in its mechanical drawing course. After telling the prospect about the purchase of a number of drawing outfits it follows with this paragraph:
"It was necessary to place this large order in order to secure the sets at the lowest possible figure. Knowing that this number will exceed our weekly sales, we have decided to offer these extra sets to some of the ambitious young men who have been writing to us. If you will fill out the enclosed scholarship blank and mail at once we will send you one of these handsome sets FREE, express prepaid. But this offer must be accepted before the last of the month. At the rate the scholarship blanks are now coming in, it is more than likely that the available sets will be exhausted before November 1st. It is necessary therefore that you send us your application at once."
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It is not necessary to offer something for nothing in your inducement. In fact, a good reason is usually a better order getter than a good premium. Make the man want your proposition—that is the secret of the good sales letter. If a man really wants your product he is going to get it sooner or later, and the selling letters that score the biggest results are those that create desire; following argument and reason with an inducement that persuades a man to part with his hard-earned money and buy your goods.