I recently watched a video by a well-known guru in the women’s entrepreneur space that promised to teach the 10 Easy Steps to Writing an Effective Sales Letter.
That list of steps was the following:
- Get their attention
- Identify the problem
- Provide the solution
- Present credentials
- Show the benefits
- Share social proof
- Make the offer
- Offer a guarantee
- Inject scarcity
- Create a call to action.
Do those sound easy to YOU?
Nothing Is Ever Actually “Easy” When You’re a Business Owner
As much respect as I have for this particular business owner, I believe she does a disservice to entrepreneurs everywhere when she puts forth the idea that you can write a good sales letter if you just follow these “10 easy steps.”
Not only are they not easy, they’re not even steps!!
When business owners are fed the idea that they can master their sales & marketing quickly and easily – “just 10 easy steps to success!” – it just sets us up for failure and self doubt. We think, “This stuff is supposed to be easy!! How come I can’t do it?”
That said, this list of 10 steps isn’t worthless.
What she’s actually listed are a set of 10 core marketing principles that business owners must wrestle with and ultimately conquer in order to be successful in selling their goods and services to the world.
This is a process that can take a long time to do – and even longer to master.
If you’re a business owner who has done this hard work and now has various products and offers in place, these 10 steps can be a nice checklist every time you do a sales pitch or write a sales letter. They can serve as a reminder, “Oh yeah, I forgot I need to mention my guarantee.”
A More Helpful List of Steps
But when you’re a new business owner, or you’re new to putting your sales message out in a big way, you probably haven’t thought about these core marketing principles before. And creating these things for the first time can be a LOT of work.
So here’s a step by step action plan to get you started.
One word of warning: the following 5 steps won’t be easy. Not by a long shot.
But because they’re actual STEPS I’m giving you, and not just an unwieldy project, you should be able to take a deep breath, knuckle down and make some good progress on accomplishing them!
1. Pick ONE of your products and write the name of it on a piece of paper.
Maybe it’s your month-long private coaching package, maybe it’s your introductory client assessment. It will be helpful if it’s a product you’ve actually sold to someone recently.
2. Pick ONE method of selling that particular product and write it down on the same sheet of paper. Maybe you sell face to face, maybe it’s over the phone, maybe it’s online.
NOTE: If you can’t easily complete Steps 1 and 2, then put this article aside until you can. If you don’t yet know WHAT you sell and HOW you sell it, it won’t help you to think about how you can sell it better, right?
3. Identify the 10 steps in your sales pitch. If you have an online sales letter already, print it out and put it alongside the first sheet of paper. If you don’t sell online, but rather you sell over the phone or in person, you’ll have to create a typical sales conversation on paper. Write down the typical flow: What do you say, what do they say? What questions do you ask? What objections do you typically encounter and how do you overcome them? How do you do your close?
With your written sales pitch in front of you ask yourself “Which of the 10 steps listed above do I address?”
Make notes for yourself on your paper, indicating exactly what it is that you say that accomplishes each step:
- Exactly how do I explain the benefits? (Step #5) Circle it and write “Benefits.”
- What exactly is my guarantee? (Step #8) Circle it and write “Guarantee.”
4. Did you forget any easy ones? For example, are you a certified XYZ (Step #4 – Credentials) but you forgot to say so in your sales pitch? Put it in there!
5. Now the hard part: make the pitch better. Chances are, you’re missing 1 or more of these steps; or maybe you just want to make a few of them better. That’s great!
However. Be careful you don’t make the mistake of trying to fix all 10 steps at once; or thinking that you can fix them all in an hour. That’s just setting yourself up for failure.
Instead, pick just one step to work on first. Set aside at least an hour to delve into it. You may find that fleshing out this “step” becomes your project for a week, a month, or even longer!
Once you’ve gotten one step the way you want it, move on to the next one.
Need More Help?
If you’d like my help as you work on this project, I’m here for you.
While most of my clients are on monthly retainers starting at $2,500/mo for one-hour sessions, I do offer one-off Blockage Removal Sessions for new clients at a steeply discounted rate of just $375.
Book Your Discounted Blockage Removal Session Now.
When you register, you will be asked the question “What would you like to focus on during this session?” You should answer, “Make My Marketing Piece Sizzle,” so I know you want to work on what I recommended in this article.
After you register, you’ll get an email from my assistant Rosie that will let you give more information about what you’d like to work on. It will also include a link to schedule your session.