"Anatomy Of A Sales Letter"Here’s a sales letter used by a tiny little independent service station that once stood on an obscure piece of ground located on the outskirts of Toledo Ohio. It’s part of a series of sales letters that were used to steal customers from the established service businesses run by the well to do dealers of the time. It’s a marvelous little jewel that I’ve used as inspiration on a number of occasions. Its form & style are perfect for pointing your prospects attention to your (USP) Unique Selling Proposition, and planting the seeds of doubt about the wisdom of continuing with their existing suppliers. This sales letter also does a superb job of demonstrating that the best defense is a strong offense. Note how it takes what some might see as a point of objection (the fact that it is a small independent), and turns it into a benefit! Let’s see how the little gem goes. Legend has it that this series of sales letters resulted in a 500% increase in sales within a period of only 15 weeks! Dear Sir: Have you ever taken your car to a dealer service station for repairs, paid a high bill, and driven away only to find that your car ran worse than before? What a great question. If you were one of those people that had such an experience, wouldn’t you be living the painful emotions that went along with it all over again? Note the mental imagery in the words “driven away”. Have you ever had it suggested to you, about the time your valves first needed grinding, that you’d better consider “turning in the old boat on a new one?” This question, & the one before it are classic examples of how to cut the competition down to size. You should never bad mouth them directly, but do ask questions that allow your prospects to make judgments about their shortcomings. Auto dealers, carrying enormous overhead, have to render service as a necessary incident to their business, which is the selling of cars --- forced on them by the manufacturers. It is an annoyance and a drain, the high cost of which is passed on to you. The dealer’s eye is always on a sale, for it is in selling that he makes his money. OK, so while the fist two questions point out the bad things that can happen when getting your car repaired, this paragraph explains why. This is essential. It’s not that the dealers are bad people. They’ve just got some conflicting interests that are being forced upon them. Even if you have never had a bad experience, now you’re thinking, hmmm this makes sense... With us it is different. Maintaining Dodges in good running order is our sole business. We have to do a good job or close up. We are not interested in coaxing you to replace the good car you have now, or in fostering the skilful propaganda that has made so many people think an automobile, built by the best mechanics out of the toughest materials, has a shorter life than a typewriter, a good washing-machine or a printing press. So now after three paragraphs of setting the stage by pointing out our car repair problems & the logical reasons for them, only now does it begin to sell us. Imagine how much less effective the letter would be if it had started out by saying that they were Dodge repair specialists, without first helping us to appreciate what that meant to us? Keep your car in repair and get your money out of it! This is a very effective statement because it issues a command, followed by a benefit. Don’t be fooled people will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid embarrassment into turning it in as worn out – only to have it run sixty thousand miles further in the hands of some taxi-cab company which knows its value. With low overhead, our labor charge is only $1.00 an hour, instead of $1.25. Genuine Dodge parts cost alike everywhere. Our splendid shop at Post and Albion is equipped to build a complete car, if necessary, and we guarantee our work. You can run out in ten minutes, and we get you home or to a car line in one of our own machines. Only after having us visualize the insult & the injury of either getting ripped off on our auto repairs, or forking out our hard earned money unnecessarily on a new car, does the letter hit us with the inevitable sales pitch. Brilliant! Forty or fifty Dodge owners have taken advantage of our free carbon-cleaning offer. Why not try it yourself? This is a great call to action because it offers something free, while demonstrating the demand for it. The phrasing is also very low key, which further stimulates desire because it doesn’t look like they are really pushing you to take it. Anyone with a funny rattle or a little trouble starting is going to jump at a potential free fix. Then once they’re in the shop, they’re quite likely to have anything else that’s wrong taken care of along with it. MILLER SAWYER SERVICE COMPANY Manager With a little ingenuity, this sales letter can easily be adapted to any number of situations. Are you the little guy in your industry? Do you face some common objections that you could counter straight out of the gate with a letter like this? Do your competitors have conflicting interests that your potential clients should know about? This sales letter (and dozens of other classics) is available in a package put together by Peter Woodhead called, ”Long Lost Marketing Secrets". If you are interested in building your own “swipe file” of proven sales letters, you should have a look! Of course the more files to swipe the better right? Try these too,
Until next time, Good Selling! 
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