Hate Cold Calling? No worries. Proven Remedy For Ending That Nauseous Marketing Activity . . . For Good!

Howdy Friend,

Cold calling. I remember it all too well. The year was 1986. I was a freshly minted real estate salesman armed with a brand new license, lots of enthusiasm and big dreams of making my millions.

I arrive at my agency ready to start writing up contracts and counting my commissions. But I quickly found out it didn’t quite work that way.

They make the biz sound so glamorous in real estate school. Your phone is ringing off the hook with prospects eager to list their property with you. You’re looking good, smellin’ good  ready to meet new clients and writing up sales contracts. Hell, I’ll probably need a secretary just to help handle all the calls . . . life doesn’t get any better than this . . . or so I thought!

What? Where are all the prospects? Heck, my phone isn’t even ringing. The sales manager tosses me the local phone book. “Start calling and introduce yourself. Offer a free market analysis. It’s how I got started, says she.

All of the sudden, I get this sick feeling in my gut. I begin to think I made a terrible career decision. What was thinking? Calling complete stranger out of the phone book? That’s nuts! There’s got to be a better way to get business!

Yuck!! I hated it and bet you do to! Geez . . . the mere sound of that word makes me queasy, feeling like I’m going to pass out cold . . . damn there’s that word again!

Luckily I got over the nauseous feeling and found a better way to get top quality prospects and turn them into customers fast!  The beauty of it all . . . this simple little lead generating method works in all businesses, any industry and will work for you too!

Enter the lead generation letter . . .

That’s right! A well written lead letter is awesome. Once you understand how to put one together you’ll be scratching your head in amazement at the sear power and efficiency it brings. You’ll never ever make a cold call again.

Before I get into the basics of creating a lead letter keep this in mind. There are numerous ways to get good quality leads . . . without cold calling. These include writing articles, using effective PR, putting on free seminars, public speaking, teaching classes and lots more.

I’ve done a number of these with great success. But creating successful lead letters is one of my favorite ways to get high quality leads. Once you get a good letter developed and proved effective you have the most reliable, controllable lead generator available.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

For starters writing a lead generating letter follows the same principles as writing a good sales letter.

Before you write a single word, you must know who you are writing to. So the process starts by learning about your prospect. Learn everything you can about your prospect. What problems are they dealing with now? What are they afraid of? What do they secretly desire?

Once you’ve gotten a handle on who is your prospect, get into your offer. Here’s where you’ll list all the features and benefits of your product or service. Once you written a long list of features and benefits put them in order of importance.

By the way, if you are not completely sure of the difference between features and benefits, here’s a hint:

A feature is something that describes the product like “a strong-running 365 horsepower V-8 engine.”

A benefit is the advantage or what the prospect gets by using or owning the product. Using the above example: The Duramax 400 V-8 lets you haul bigger payloads in its class and still getting and unbeatable 20 miles per gallon.

See the difference? Good!

Let me derail here and talk about sales formulas. Now before you get all starry eyed let me just say again there is no magic bullets or shortcuts for anything you do in life.

I will say, however, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel either. With that said, a popular sales formula is my friend AIDA . . .

The AIDA formula has been around for years and used as a successful selling guideline for just about any selling situation you could image. It is a great guideline for writing sales message . . . i.e. the sales letter.

Just keep in mind writing a great sales letter has more to do with good old fashion door-to-door salesmanship than ‘good writing’ you learned in school.

This stands for . . .

A- attention

I- interest

D- desire

A- action

Let’s briefly look at each part, shall we?

Attention- Simply put, get the attention of your customer or prospect. Usually the headline is used to flag down your prospect and grab ‘em by the eyeballs.

Interest – Raise interest by showing or demonstrating the advantages of the product or service and focusing on the benefits.

Desire – Convince the prospect they want and desire the product and that it will satisfy their needs and wants.

Action – Asking the prospect for action (making a purchase, visiting your store, website, etc.)

So there you have it in a nutshell. A complete selling formula in four easy words along with a proven marketing method for ending your pain of cold calling. This by no means the only selling formula around but an awfully good one. Just keep in mind the key to remember is advertising is nothing more than salesmanship in print.

Warmly,

Emette Massey

P.S. Want a great sales letter swipe you can use to model your letters after? Just email me at eemassey@yahoo.com . . . I’ll zip it right over to you.