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68 The Seven Lost Secrets of Success

Clyde Bedell, in his 1940 book How to Write Advertising
That Sells, wrote, “The best way to be sincere is—to be
sincere. An attempt to write sincerity into your copy
without honestly wanting to be sincere won’t work.”

When I wrote a sales letter to sell ThoughtLine, an
artificial intelligence software program, I was totally in
support it of. And my letter showed it. I got an incredible
response—over 5 percent—during a recession. (The aver-
age sales letter gets no more than 0.02 percent response.)

But when I wrote a letter on another service, one
about which I had reservations, my lack of support was
seen by all—it was between the lines but still obvious.

That letter was a dud.
You can successfully sell only what you sincerely
believe in. You may be able to fool people once, but
you’ll lose a repeat customer. Since most of your busi-
ness will come from your satisfied customers (who keep
coming back for more), you can’t afford to be insincere
or manipulative.
Bruce David, author of Mercenary Marketing, says if you
don’t offer a product or service of true value, you won’t
stay in business. David admits that advertising “may
persuade people to try your products or services (as it
should) once; but if you don’t offer value and quality, you
won’t convert these people into repeat customers.”

THEY TOLD HIM NO

Final thought on this subject: When Bruce Barton wrote
his most famous book, The Man Nobody Knows, he had
no evidence that it would ever sell.