write sales letter
How to write a $1,000 sales letter (that sells at all times of the day)
When I first started working online, I honestly had no idea what a sales letter was.
I thought online marketing was simply setting up Facebook ads, driving traffic to your website, getting people to fill out a contact form before they left…
And that was about it.
Looking back now I can see how funny this is, but after failed businesses and no conversions, I finally threw in the towel and took a premium copywriting class.
This course taught me a lot of things about selling online in general, but if there’s one thing that’s benefited me time and time again…
Directly generating $10’s of thousands of dollars over the last 2 years, it’s the:
Sales Letter
If you’re not familiar with the term sales letter, it’s really a digital salesman on paper (figuratively).
The main purpose of these letters is to talk to your customers, tell them that you understand what they’re looking for, show them how your product could help them reach their goals, address any objections, and then get them to take action on your offer.
Easy enough?
Don’t worry, it’s really not that tough, well — as long as you know what to look for anyway.
I’ll give you everything you need to know here in a second, but first, just remember that sales letters are really designed for any product (or service) that sells for $50 or more.
Anything less than that already has a low barrier of entry, so you don’t really need to go through the hassle of creating a sales letter, even though it could help (just don’t do it for e-commerce products, that seems over-the-top).
Okay, let’s get started:
Part 1: Customer Research
The unsung hero of a sales letter starts with customer research.
Most entrepreneurs think that speaking “professionally” and marketing to everybody is the way to write copy, but that’s also why a lot of online entrepreneurs don’t last too long.
And don’t think you need to go too crazy with it either, there’s no need to hire a research firm (or even a freelancer)…
With the tools available to us today, one simple website usually does the trick.
What do I mean?
I’ll be honest with you, my best converting sales letters were ones that I did 100% of the research via Reddit or Quora.
These two sites work best as you can see exactly what your target audience is saying, and after “immersing” yourself with them for a few days…
You’ll not only start to use the words they’re saying (which is key), but you’ll also have enough information to understand them better.
I’ve heard of a few different ways to do this, but for me personally, I always like to do my research with the intention of understanding them better in 3 different areas:
Their hopes and dreams (what the client wants to attain or achieve above all else)
Example — “I would love to build a business on the side to quit this soul-sucking job”
Their pains and fears (what the clients wants to avoid or get away from at all costs)
Example — “I wake up every morning completely exhausted, dreading my 1-hour commute to work”
Barriers and uncertainties (Things preventing or getting in the way of your customers attaining what they want)
Example — “Yeah, of course I want to start a business, but where do I even begin?”
And if you want an exact template of the customer research template that I use, including more examples, you can find that here:
Part 2: The headline
Most people tell you to make a headline after you’ve created the rest of your letter, but I think that’s a terrible idea.
I mean sure, you could always give it a few tweaks after you’ve went through everything, but after writing numerous sales letters (and blogs) I’ve found that it works a lot better when I write the headline first because then I at least know what I’m going to talk about.
With that said, always remember that headlines are the most important part of your sales letter because it’s really what engages the reader and keeps them going to your actual letter.
There’s a few different ways you could make sure you get the right headline, but the first area of importance is remembering where your readers are coming from.
In other words, if they’re coming out of a 5-day email funnel then you’ll want to create a headline that relates to what you’ve covered over the last 5 days, but if they’re just visiting a course page that you’ve created, then you’ll want to act accordingly.
As a general rule of thumb, question headlines tend to work best for “cold traffic”:
And straight to the point, benefit driven, headlines work best for readers who’ve come through a 5-day funnel:
The last thing I wanted to mention with headlines is the importance of subheaders.
I didn’t realize this until I read Ogilvy On Advertising and he mentioned how the subheader was extremely important because it prepared the reader for the “feast” that was about to occur (i.e. pre-framing their view on what they’re about to read).
But after seeing this and realizing that I was missing out on an important step, I went back and inserted a subheader on all my sales letters…
And let’s just say, the improvement was amazing.
Part 3: The Body
Alright, now that we have the research complete and headline in place, it’s time to start on the body.
As I’m sure you can imagine, the body is extremely important as it’s what keeps the reader’s attention and prepares them for your offer.
This is also the same part where a lot of “amateur” copywriters mess up on, thinking they need nothing more than some fancy writing and a bunch of !!! to get the point across…
When in all reality, it all comes down to the hooks.
What are those?
Hooks are the underlying psychology that takes place in any form of sales writing, and even though I’ve read a lot of different techniques to apply these hooks — the best (and simplest) method I’ve ever learned came from Ramit Sethi’s Call To Action course.
As Ramit explained, the only hooks you need to worry about are:
- Paint the Dream — Show them how you’ll help them reach their dream. Example: “You can make money in your sleep”
- Twist the Knife — Something that really digs into their fears or pains. Example: “Why can’t our generation get anything done?”
- The Great Discovery — Any discovery that you’d consider “shocking”, and one that usually shows them how to get around their barriers or uncertainties. Example: “I realized the key to productivity wasn’t time management, but energy management”.
- The Unspoken Truth — This one is one of my personal favorites, and it’s just as the name states — mentioning the unspoken truth. This would relate best to their pains and fears, and even though it’s tougher in the beginning — this is one where you really want to try and have no filter on. Example: “You take care of everyone else. Who takes care of you?”
- The Incredible Story — Last but not least, the incredible story. This hook usually relates most to the “hopes and dreams” category, and tells people an amazing story that also shows how they could reach their dreams. Example: “76-year old man teaches a young tough guy how to get in shape”.
And as you can see, these hooks really aren’t that complex — but they’re even easier to implement.
All you need to do is choose a minimum of 3 hooks that tie in well with the customer research template you created, and to give you an example of how this would look, here’s a recent outline I created during a live video breakdown for a bookkeeper’s “About Me” page:
- At its core, bookkeeping really isn’t that hard (Unspoken Truth)
- It’s hard to make decisions without the right information, and unless you’re able to pay thousands of dollars for a CPA — this can be hard to get (Twist the Knife)
- After years of working as a Credit Analyst and obtaining my Master’s Degree in Accounting, I’ve decided to become a Bookkeeper that helps you grow (Paint the Dream)
Again, this is for an about me page so it’s going to be a shorter version of a sales letter, but it’s still technically a sales letter and I think I’m one of 10 people that does this on Upwork, which is also why I think I was able to stand out so quickly.
Anyway, now that we have our 3 hooks in place it’s time to weave them together with a story.
I’m sure you’ve heard the importance of storytelling and how it’s the best way for our brains to process information (or something like that)…
But at the end of the day, it’s really not that hard to do, you just have to make sure that you:
- Talk like a human (none of that stuck up “professional” stuff)
- Honestly act like you’re having a conversation with your client
This is the same reason why some copywriters use talk-to-text when creating the first draft of their sales letter, then edit it after that…
And I can totally see how this would work great, but I’ve never been a fan of it, so I think it’s mainly a personal preference.
Anyway, I’ll show you how to weave these together in a second after I’ve covered the last two parts, but as a quick recap on the body:
- Create an outline that consists of 3 (or more) hooks
- Make sure these hooks relate to the information we put on your customer research page
- Weave these hooks together with a story
Part 4: Bullet Points
On to the next part, bullet points.
So bullet points are quite possibly the most underutilized (and misunderstood) part of writing, but when used correctly, they can make a world of difference.
What do I mean?
Well, as Ramit said in his course, bullet points are more like fascination points…
And whenever you have something extremely important to say, you should always lay them out in this format as all readers (even skimmers) are more likely to read them.
Now I couldn’t agree more, but I’ve taken this one step further and use bullet points whenever I’m showing the reader a significant benefit I can provide them.
I think this is important because as Dale Carnegie says in his book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, persuasion is really just knowing what people want and showing how you can help them get there.
As the popular phrase goes, people don’t buy a hammer because they want a hammer, they buy a hammer because they want the hole…
So if you can show the reader how your product will help them achieve their desired results (likely in the Hopes and Dreams section of your customer research template) — then you’re off to a great start.
Again, I’ll give you a better example of this when I provide a complete “sales letter” at the end of this, but it’s something I wanted to point out before we got into our last section.
Part 5: The Offer
Last but not least, the offer.
Now that we’ve got the reader ready with your headline, then showed them the benefits and built a rapport with your body…
It’s time to finally unravel what this sale letter is all about.
The good news is that your offer is actually the easiest part as you’ve already done all the selling, so now all you need to do is tell them what your offer is.
This will also differ between every product, but it works best when you layout your offer, tell them exactly what they’re getting, and how they’ll get it.
The main reason for this is because you want to address every question right away, and the questions of “what exactly do I get” or “how does this work” are the main questions that most people ask…
So if you can address this right away, then your sales will only go up.
With all that said, there’s 2 additional components that you always want to include with your offer, and thats:
- The call to action — telling the reader what they need to do in order to keep moving forward (i.e. Get started by clicking on this button, call us at…, etc.)
- Guarantee — Nobody likes entering into a transaction that they can get burnt on, and if your product (or service) is good enough — then you should never have to worry about unnecessary refunds
And that’s it!
That’s honestly everything you need to know with a sales letter, and I’ll show you a short example next, but before we get there — here’s a few additional considerations I wanted to pass on.
Additional Considerations
- Never worry about length, buyers will read as long as they need to (just make sure every word deserves to be on the page, nobody likes filler)
- If the letter is long enough, it generally works best when you have two call to actions (one before the guarantee and one after)
- I don’t always do this, but in most instances, if you can think of any question they have and address them (via FAQ) then it’s extremely helpful
Alright, and that’s about it, so now time for the example.
Remember, this is an example of a “hidden sales letter” where I created a live breakdown for one of my courses, and I did this in about 10 minutes so it’s not my best writing…
BUT, it’s certainly good enough, so without further ado…
Here’s an example of a short sales letter:
When you really think about it, bookkeeping isn’t that hard.
It’s simply the process of organizing transactions and making sure all the numbers are in the right place…
Which is something many bookkeepers claim they can do, and even though most of them do a great job…
Very few actually understand accounting, making it very difficult to get positive feedback and make smart decisions.
Whether that’s tax planning that’ll save you thousands of dollars every year or pro-forma projections that show you profitable sources of revenue…
We both know how important this information is…
And after seeing many entrepreneurs struggle with this issue for years, I finally decided to combine my years of experience (Commercial Credit Analyst/Loan Officer), education (Master’s in Accounting), and credentials (IRS Enrolled Agent) to create a powerful combination that can help you.
So if your company could benefit from:
- Bookkeeping skills that organize your transactions and create 100% accurate reports…
- Financial experience that knows what to look for and how to use this information to help you…
- Or tax planning that could save you thousands of dollars each year…
Then I’d like to see if I could help you….
And all you need to do is simply scroll up to the upper right-hand corner, click on “invite to job” — then shoot me a quick message that tells me what you’re looking for!
I’ll be in touch shortly after that for a quick conversation to see if we’re a good fit — and we can get going after that!
P.S. Even if you’re not ready right away, please don’t hesitate to reach out anyway.
I’ve had a lot of success with this combination and my referral network has really grown over the past year.
I want to help everybody I can, but my growing workload has limited my availability….and if you reach out today, you can reserve your spot for when the you’re ready to get started.
Analysis
As you can see, the start of my letter was simply weaving my 3 hooks together. If you can’t remember the hooks, they were:
- At its core, bookkeeping really isn’t that hard (Unspoken Truth)
- It’s hard to make decisions without the right information, and unless you’re able to pay thousands of dollars for a CPA — this can be hard to get (Twist the Knife)
- After years of working as a Credit Analyst and obtaining my Master’s Degree in Accounting, I’ve decided to become a Bookkeeper that helps you grow (Paint the Dream)
Then after I got done weaving these together, I jumped right into my bullet points (telling the reader how I could benefit them)…
And the offer is a little tricky in this situation as it can be a few different things, but I still made sure to include my call to action.
That way the reader knew exactly what they needed to do if they wanted to work with me going forward…
And even though I’ve never used this exact sales letter on an Upwork profile, I’ve created dozens of others that have gotten me interviews and clients at all times of the day (even when I wasn’t online)…
Showing how powerful these letters can be, short or small.
The conclusion
A sales letter is quite possibly the most important thing you can have in online business today.
Not only does it serve as a digital salesman that never calls in sick, but when designed correctly, it can get you sales at all times of the day…
Even as you sleep.
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