Page 242 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

was anxious to find out what he thought of this method of advertising. The
letter wound up with a paragraph asking authority from the prospect to send
the order which was requested in the phonograph record.

The returns from the second follow-up letter exceeded the returns from the
first letter three times over. The conditions were practically the same, but in
the case of the second letter the sales manager had used his knowledge of
human nature.

He knew what the first writer did not know, that everybody has decided
opinions on the best way to advertise, and by asking their opinions you not
only flatter them but they jump at the chance to air their opinions. This is
exactly what happened in this case.

There are a great many ways where this knowledge of human nature can be
brought into play when writing a sales letter. Nine-tenths of the sales letters
which go out fail because the writer does not understand that point. The
wording, the phraseology and the grammatical construction of the letter are
very important it is true, but after all the plan is the thing, and it is much
better to have a letter with a good plan and poor phraseology than it is to have
a letter with no plan and the best grammar in the world.

So many letters ramble about and get nowhere. To read them is like watching
an eight-ring circus. After you have read them you have no definite
impression—just a mass of jumbled words. Make your letters paint a picture.
All the words in the dictionary won’t sell goods. Only ideas, indelibly
impressed on the mind of a reader, will provoke action. Another reason some
letters don’t pay is that the writer forgets that the person he is writing to is not
much interested in what he is writing about. On the contrary it has been
demonstrated that seven times out of ten, the recipient of a letter, especially if
he is a business man, will read only the opening paragraph, take a flying
jump at the middle and then examine the last paragraph to see what it is all
about and how much it costs.

The most successful sales letters are those which carry a complete selling
message in the last paragraph. The practice of spending a lot of time in