Dan Kennedy - The Ultimate Sales Letter

THE ULTIMATE SALES LETTER

time to produce a mock-up and mail it. Your prospective customers will likely look much less charitably on the receipt of your letter than you do, but you will at least have something approaching a "real-life" test of your letter's initial appearance and effectiveness.

Step

THE COOL OFF

You probably don't want to hear this, but the best thing for you to do once you receive your mock-up is-nothing. At least for a few days. The reason? You need to win back some objectivity. That quality is probably in pretty short supply now.

The more you work with your sales letter, the more likely you are to fall in love with it-see its beauties but not its blemishes. Also, you're going to get impatient with this admittedly lengthybut effective-system. For these reasons, a threeto five-day cooling-off period is a good idea.

I confess that I sometimes work under such intense deadline pressure that I skip this step, even severalof these last steps;I think my finished work in those situations suffers a little as a result. However, I would welcome the luxury of extra time to restore my objective judgment. If you have the time, take the time.

Step

GET SECOND

OPINIONS

I believe in getting second opinions, within certain very definite limits. You may have gotten such opinions earlier in this process, as part of pretesting. It won't hurt to get them again, now that you have done a great deal more work. The more experienced your contact, the better the advice you receive is likely to be.

GElTlNG AN EXPERT SECOND OPINION

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What's an expert? Tough question. Everybody recognizes how unqualified everybody else is to opine on a matter, but no one considershimself unqualified to do so. (Considerthat several surveys have shown somethingclose to 70%of all licensed drivers to consider themselves "above averagep'-a statistical impossibility!) There is certainly no shortage of available opinions. Unfortunately, most are at best worthless and at worst dangerous.

T H E ULTIMATE SALES LElTER

Many people in direct marketing develop their own little networks of peers and colleagues they can bounce ideas, copy, and drafts off of in search of valid feedback. If you write a lot of sales letters, you need to develop such a network. If you don't know appropriate people, I'd suggest setting about meeting them. Seek out your local Direct Marketing Club and attend its meetings. Seek out your peers in national, state, and local trade associations who are aggressive, progressive marketers. And get a copy of the classic self-improvement book Think and Grow Rich by Dr. Napoleon Hill; study his ideas about forming a "mastermind group." There you'll find a little blueprint for your own creative alliance.

In the meantime, this book has been designed to serve as a consultant to you and to offer input on your sales letters.

Finally, I'd like to offer you a little personal assistance. On the next page, you'll find one of my Critique Certificates, which entitles you to submit one printed piece-such as a sales letter-for your business, for my personal review and comment. We routinely charge no less than $100 to $200 per critique, so this is a very real $100 to $200 value. It's probably the only time in your life you'll ever buy an inexpensive book and find $100 stuck inside it!

And it's very possible that redeeming it will prove even more valuable to you.

Step

GIVE IT THE

FINAL REVIEW

This is it-the last chance to tinker and tighten. Take the time to find a quiet, peaceful place and scrutinize your letter just one more time.

Step

GO TO PRESS

Give it to the printers-but don't give up control. Make sure your concept stays intact. If you're dealing with a complex mailing or large quantity, check proofs and blue lines personally and carefully. Changes during this period-from the time you hand over the mechanicals to the time you give the OK for the work to go on press-fall into two categories: printer errors (PEs) and author alterations (AAs).

After following the exhaustive review and double-checkpro- cedures outlined in this book, there's very little likelihood you're going to decide to rewrite paragraphs now. But if you do, be prepared to pay-a lot. AAs are expensive, and you should only indulge in them if you find a glaring and damaging mistake. At this point, moving commas from inside the quotation marks to outside isn't the best use of your resources.

PEs, however, are another story. If you wanted yellow underlining and got a dull orange, make some noise and don't let the printer talk you into letting it go "as is." If the photos have uneven color values, tell the printer to go back and do the job again. If you