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Ultimate Sales
Letter
(3rd edition), by Dan Kennedy
Dan Kennedy is a popular copywriter and high-profile internet presence.
His trademark "No B.S." style is not for the fainthearted, but
for those who like their truths plain, and plainly told, he is an
excellent source of advice.
The
Ultimate Sales Letter is designed to teach business owners how to
write their own letters, and it's amply illustrated with samples of
Kennedy's work, both real and manufactured. The letter he creates to show
you how to provide the "internal repetition" your message
needs—without putting your client to sleep—is particularly helpful.
Kennedy never forgets his
audience, and takes us step-by-step, with short, snappy chapters, from
getting the initial idea to sending off the final draft to the printer.
It's a fast read, but packed with information.
His first step is first for
a reason, I think. He says that before you do anything else, you must know
your customer. He offers 10 questions you can ask yourself that will
bring you closer to that knowledge, then smoothly segues into knowing
your offer (where he gives a memorable example of "finding the
hidden benefit" and what such benefits can do for your message).
Later, he tells the story of
an older salesman whose first boss gave him a notebook of 299 sales
techniques. He quickly whittled them down to the "three or four that
worked," and Kennedy tells us what those few are—and why
they work. This new edition also offers a bonus chapter by the late,
much-missed Cory Rudl, who explains why no square inch of your website is
too small to ignore--not even the "Online Ordering" button.
The book consists of five
sections, but they're more like an introduction, main text and three
appendices. Section III outlines several uses for sales letters: to create
leads or traffic to your store, or to send to existing customers. This
last group is particularly and oddly overlooked by the business world, and
I like that Kennedy singles them out. He closes the book with a powerful
one-two salesletter series punch that he says he's been using in his
seminars for ten years.
The Ultimate Sales
Letter
is particularly strong in its examples, and its
approachability. Kennedy never talks down to his reader. More than once, I
felt as if I were hearing him tell me his secrets over a glass of (I'm
guessing) bourbon. Maybe scotch. And when he got to the part about the
Three Ways to Transcend Pricing Questions, I grabbed a napkin and started
taking notes.
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