Are Your Sales On The Up?

By:Homer Farey

Copyright 2006 Homer Farey

Ask Yourself Some Questions. How good is your sales letter? The old adage: "Sell the sizzle, not the steak" is as relevant now as it was in the old days of door knocking.

If I buy your product, how will I benefit? • Will it help me to become rich? • A better person? • Happier? • Better looking? • Will it make me more attractive to the opposite sex?

Convince me of just one of these, or similar things and the price you charge will not matter.

Let's look at the sales letter. • Has It gone stale? • How good was it in the first instance? • Were you happy with the initial response? • If so, what went wrong? • Would a makeover put it right? • Perhaps it just needs a new headline.

If the click through rate is good, it would appear that the headline is doing it's job. Should the ratio of purchases to clicks-through be poor, I would suggest that the text of the letter is not up to scratch. Just changing a few words here and there can give a quite different impression to the reader.

Whatever you are selling, a very large percentage of the population will not be interested in it. You must aim at those who would get the most benefit from your particular product.

You would not think of advertising fishing rods in a fashion magazine.

It is amazing how many things are aimed at e-zines and other media that have little or no relevance to the product.

Whatever you do, don't give up. If you have faith in what you are selling, you will find the best methods of promoting it.

When writing an advert concentrate first on the headline. This is the most important part of the project. The headline must capture the reader's attention. Without a good headline, the best advert in the world will be overlooked and just a waste of space, time and money.

Look now at the text of your sales letter/advert. Are you talking to a real person? Are you explaining what you and your product can do for that person? Do you come across as an honest reliable person? Or is your letter full oh hype with no substance?

Your prospect is not really interested in you. He/She is only interested in what is in it for them. Few people surf the net looking for something to buy. As a general rule they are looking for information. That is the reason that your headline has to stand out from the crowd. It must make them stop and take another look. It must intrigue them enough to make them want to read more. The content of the ad’ must excite them enough to want to purchase something that they did not even know existed just five minutes ago.

Does your advert do that? Writing an advert is not a skill that the majority of people are born with. It is something that needs to be learned. During your lifetime you have learned numerous things that were difficult in the beginning but that you rarely even think about now. They have become part of your lives. Writing adverts and articles is just another thing that you need to learn how to do well.

Looking back at some of my first efforts at writing adverts, it is a wonder that I ever sold anything, but I did, not a lot but I sold enough to realise that with a little practice there was money to be made by anyone with the will to learn and to take proper advice from the experts on how to go about it. (One day I hope to be an expert there is still a lot for me to learn.) It’s an on-going ever evolving process. Study as many adverts as you can. Try to figure out what it is that excites you and what just leaves you cold. Study the headlines. What made you read this one rather than that. Does the author of the advert strike you as honest and knowledgeable? What sort of guarantee is on offer? Be honest with yourself. Would you buy from this person?

Study, Study, study and keep on studying. You have just taken the first step on your way to becoming a very wealthy expert in your chosen field. Don’t let it stop there.

Homer.

Digg del.icio.us Blink Stumble Spurl Reddit Netscape Furl

Article keywords: Sales, Advertising, Headlines, Content, Adverts

Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Homer is a silver serfer who concentrates entirely on affiliate marketing. He makes all the money that he needs 'And more' using the services of CBmall. To see how he does it, visit his blog at:
www.homer-secrets.blogspot.com

Top Sales Articles
1). Why Use Lead Management Software? By : Halstatt Pires Having a popular website, or popular company of any type, is entirely dependant on sales. Effective sales at that. Maintaining a healthy profit is key to the long-term survival of your web site or business and this means knowing the difference between your effective sales leads and your ineffective sales leads. Small Business Owner Lead management software is perfect for the small business owner or webmaster of a website.
2). Power Words By : Wendy Weiss I conducted a teleconference a few weeks ago with people who were new in sales and new to prospecting. The focus of the call was to help participants get beyond fear and understand their prospecting process. One of the participants on the call told me that she had been given the telephone prospecting script that her team leader uses to set appointments.
3). Secrets to Getting Paid for Your Creative Ideas and Proposals By : Kirstin Carey Many creative professionals such as event planners, interior designers, and decorative painters are frustrated when potential clients steal their ideas and take them to cheaper companies. They present their ideas in a proposal or presentation and later find that they didn’t get the client and their designs are being used by someone else. PROTECT YOUR IDEAS In order to protect your ideas and still get the client, you have to change how you deliver your concepts and specifically what you present.
4). The Sales Training Series: Dealing With Sales Objections and Stalls By : Duane Sparks Most salespeople think of “stalls” and “objections” as synonyms. Wrong. Stalls and objections are both things you may hear after you have asked for commitment, but an objection is a specific reason not to buy. In a stall—“I need to think about it”—the customer offers no particular reason for hesitating.
5). What’s the Objective of Your 1st Sales Appointment? By : Jeff Hardesty Have you defined what you want to happen at the conclusion of your 1st appointment? Only then can you actually set up a proficient sales methodology to achieve the defined objective more times than not. And with a pre-defined objective to your 1st appointment you can (1) set a realistic benchmark of success and (2) measure the outcome. It becomes part of your sales performance scorecard.
6). Stop Cold Calling and Double Your Sales in 30 Days By : Hartley Pinn Everyone knows what “cold calling” is, but how about “warm calling”? That’s easy, warm calling involves contacting your former clients and people you have already identified as prospects. These are the people you had made previous contact with and are listed in your database or on your Rolodex. If appropriate for your industry, I recommend spending one hour a day calling your database.
7). Restaurant Supply a Lifesaver for Caterer By : Kingston Amadan A few years ago, I was working as a catering manager of a local historic hotel. The hotel had been in terrible condition for many years until a group of investors purchased it and began the long arduous process of renovation. They were able to get the majority of it renovated before the funding started to run out, at which time they opened for business to offset some of the costs of ownership.
8). Employers Keep Screening Out Great Sales Candidates By : Robert Cameron Companies hiring sales reps stick to the same old hiring practices, and hire low performers that turn over, while screening out some of the best candidates. Robert Cameron examines two hiring myths and shows you how to easily select sales people who can sell.
9). The Five Cardinal Sins Salespeople Commit By : Bill Brooks We have very candid conversations with the sales professionals who come to our seminars and through those discussions we’ve discovered five critical errors that most salespeople make. Of course, we help them correct those mistakes, but it’s somewhat surprising as to how common they are. Here are the mistakes, see if you commit them in your own sales career.
10). The Downlow on Buying and Selling Concert Tickets Online By : Jared Lock Buying concert tickets online isn’t scary. In fact, it’s as easy as visiting Google and typing in the event you are looking for and follow with the word “tickets”. However, a couple of questions may come to mind when browsing for sports or concert tickets. 1. Why are tickets so expensive on the internet? On Ticketmaster the tickets are so much cheaper.

New Sales Articles
1). How To Get Return Customers By : David Gass Explains to to build customer loyalty and get customers to come back and buy more.
2). 7 Strategies for Loan Officers to Guarantee an Awesome 2006 By : Joe Pahl With the coming high interest rate market, loan officers who follow these seven strategies will guarantee having a successful 2006. The stratgies include new technology, proper planning, business referral groups, and maximizing your "geese that lays golden eggs" among others.
3). 7 Reasons Why Loan Officers SHOULD NOT Market to REALTORS By : Joe Pahl This article expresses why marketing to real estate agents is not always the best option and explores seven other ways to generate purchase business.
4). Staying Warm in a Cooling Market By : Bob Corcoran As the National Real Estate market changes there are five key items an agent can embrace to make the most of this market shift
5). Dealing with the RIGHT Decision Maker By : Tim Hagen Dealing with different decision making styles and decision makers appropriately is a big part of being successful in sales. This article will provide background to the different types of personalities that can be encountered in the sales process.
6). Get Ahead By Using Affiliates By : David Gass Describes what affiliates are and how to benefit from them.
7). How to Make an Unsuccessful Sale a Good Learning Experience By : Tim Hagen Losing a deal can be difficult, however learning from the experience can reap huge rewards. Successfully using what you did incorrectly can change future outcomes if addressed correctly.
8). Closing A Sale: Promise and Deliver! By : Hartley Pinn One of the chief complaints from customers about the way business is conducted these days centers on customer service. Either the service aspect is completely lacking or what has been promised to the customer hasn’t been kept. Dealing with the latter category, it is easy to see why customers are disappointed: sales people routinely over promise and then fail to deliver.
9). Sales Secrets for Entrepreneurs: Increase Profits in 12 Months Flat Through Consumer Education Programs! By : Chet Holmes You can attract far more prospects to look at your offer by providing an education than you'll ever get by simply offering your products or services. For example: Let's say you sell telephone systems, like Company X. Before discovering this concept, Company X would call hundreds of companies per day and ask if they were interested in talking about a new telephone system (product offer).
10). Sell Services Online By : Eggbilly Is it possible to take a normal offline service business like a legal practice, private medical practitioner or even a real estate business and make money with it from the Internet? As someone who’s been doing this since 1996, I say the answer is a resounding “YES”. If you are a business owner, or even an affiliate marketer, you know how hard it is to make a living online.