MBA2337 Must Read: The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show. Power up your business with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an innovative software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is a must-read episode. On our must-read episodes, I share with you a book that I've read that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights, and why you should read it too. Today's must-read is The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy is seen as one of the godfathers of sales copy and copywriting.

0:42Sort of a modern-day Ogilvy, and his book, The Ultimate Sales Letter, is all about how to become a better sales writer. It's got over a thousand reviews on Amazon. People in the know rave about this book because of how simple and practical it is. Listen, writing sales copy is a big part of becoming successful as an entrepreneur. Whether it's writing emails in your newsletter, writing the words that are on your website or your sales pages, scripts for videos, you name it. The words you say make an impact on your customers. Choose the right words, and it could be the difference between a dud business and a highly successful one.

1:20This book shows you how. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. The Ultimate Sales Letter, written by Dan Kennedy, is a very easy-to-read book. It actually puts you at ease at the start, explaining to you that anybody could be good at sales copy. Dan breaks down the myth of sales copy being an R. It's not really an R, he says. He says it's more of a mechanical process, like putting a puzzle together. And if you know all the pieces, it's pretty easy. But he also emphasizes that great sales copy is indispensable in today's world. It's what's gonna help you be different. It's gonna help you differentiate yourself from the competition.

1:57Now, I wanna get in front of this and say that many people read this book and think it's really old school and Dan is a really old school marketer. And he gives examples of actual physical letters that were sent in the mail to sell something. But I'm a big believer in adopting the old with the new, and so does Dan. Dan's written copy for some of the biggest companies in the world. He's done copy for infomercials, TV commercials, and some of the most profitable websites on the internet. Words are words, okay? When people read your emails, when people read your offers, when people see your sales letters or your sales pages on your website, they're reading words.

2:36and what those words tell them will be the deciding factor if they buy or not. It's simple as that. It's the information that they're going to get through you, through the words. Same goes as videos. Say you're doing a sales video or a video on YouTube and you want to convince your viewer of something, it's all about the words that you say. And it all starts with sales copy. So when you hear the word sales letter, it's just basically the words that are conveyed to the customer. One of the points in this book that he really drills home and spends a lot of time focusing on, because it's so important, is understanding your customer.

3:11Understanding who they are, what their fears are, what they loathe, what they love, what a day in a life is like. Now, this should be easy if it's your own business because you probably know your customer really well. But he even gives examples if you aren't the business owner or you're not familiar with the product. Say you're an affiliate of a product and you're trying to sell this product to an audience you don't really know that well. He goes as far as saying, you should read all the trade magazines that those people read. Watch the same YouTube channels or listen to the podcast that they listen to.

3:40Go to the neighborhoods they frequent. See what life is like. Walk in their shoes. He gives this example where he had to write some sales copy to sell a real estate product. He knows nothing about real estate, but he needs to understand the customer really well. Understand what they talk about, what they joke about, the terminology, the jargon, things that keep them up at night. So he actually went to a trade show for real estate that was in his local area. He didn't actually go to the actual conference, but he hung out of the hotel. He had drinks with the attendees. He even took one of the attendees to lunch in exchange to learn about this world.

4:13Understanding your customer really well makes it easy for you to create effective copy. Why? Because great sales copy, as he describes in this book, addresses everything that's going on in the mind of the customer. What's really cool about this book is that he'll explain a topic and then he'll give you a piece of copy that you could read displaying how to use that technique or the importance of what he just said. In the book, he gives this example of some sales copy to encourage companies to sponsor a telethon for a public television station, you know, to raise funds. And they're raising funds for arthritis.

4:46So he understands that big companies probably don't want to spend any money. They don't want to be hassled. They think this is like a waste of time, or maybe there's not going to really be a benefit to them. So through the sales copy, he shows how he addresses all these issues, how it could cost no money for them and they're going to get really a lot of exposure on TV, how this could be fun for their employees and how this can be a great initiative for their company. But this copy would not exist. It would not be created if he didn't understand the fears and the wants and the needs and the objections that the customer might have.

5:19So one of the exercises that he shares that I highly recommend you could do right now, if you'd like, right after this episode, is just list all the reasons why your customer would not buy your product or service. What's stopping them? What would stop them in their head? Whether it takes too much time to implement, whether they're not sure it's right for them, whether it's price, whether it's implementation. Maybe your product looks cool, but they're not really sure how they can use it. The use case, just list down as much as possible. Force yourself to come up with a long, long list of all the reasons why your customers would not buy.

5:51This is critical because then you can have that all out in the open and you can address every single one of them in your copy. One of my other favorite parts of this book, he talks about the reader's attention. Now, when he says readers, it means anybody who's consuming the words, the content. So this could be listeners on a podcast or viewers on a video. The point here is that attention is gold and you want to keep their attention. So instead of talking about things that are boring to them, they don't understand, they're not familiar with, enter the conversations they're already having in their head.

6:24This is why you hear a lot of copy start with, are you worried about XYZ? Do you hate it when one, two, three, you're jumping right into something that they're already familiar with, that's already occurring in their head. You got their attention. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, I recognize that. Yeah, this person's talking about my problems, my issues, my fears. Now that you have their attention, you can unpack all these issues and show them how your product or service can solve all of them for them easily. Pretty cool. Now, he says, when presenting your solution, organize the features and benefits in order of importance.

6:58A couple of things here. He stresses the idea of benefits. Features are the things you give. Benefits are what they do. Benefits are actually more important than the features. And the key word here that I always like to use is so you can. So whatever your product or offering has to offer, like a feature. Let's say, for example, I'm running a five-day challenge on how to build your first challenge. One of the features of this challenge is we're giving them slide templates for their first challenge. The feature is a slide template, but the benefit is what that slide template can do for them. That's really what's important.

7:34So you say something like, so for example, you'll get beautifully designed challenge slide templates so you can create the slides for your challenge in minutes and not hours. So you can shows them the benefit, shows them, hey, this is why this is important. This is why it's valuable. It's going to save you time. It's going to save you effort. Then he says, what are these features and benefits in order of importance? So the most important, most impressive one, first, second, third, fourth, you get it. One of my favorite parts of this book is the strategy he shares where you openly admit the drawbacks of your offer.

8:08I know this sounds counterintuitive, but it actually is magic because it actually enhances your offer and brings up your credibility to high levels, meaning that they can trust you because you're actually not just saying we do everything. You're saying we actually don't do this. The example he gives is a local Italian restaurant where they openly admit, hey, we're not this. They say if you're looking for a fancy Italian restaurant that has white tablecloths and waiters with towels on their arms and menu items you can't pronounce, we're not that. But if you're looking for great Italian food cooked by an authentic Italian mama with plastic tablecloths and the choice between bottomless white or red wine, you're going to love us.

8:48So they flat out say, hey, we're not this fancy place. We're not this fine dining experience. We don't do all this fancy stuff. So if that's what you're looking for, We're not for you. But if you're looking for a great meal, one that's authentic and tasty and a good value, you're going to love us. What I love about this is that you're admitting one, you're not this. But by showing what you're not, you emphasize what you are. And it makes your product, your offer, more appealing because they have something to compare it to. You also attract the right customer who would not get disappointed. it.

9:21They're going to come to your restaurant knowing what they're getting, and therefore, they won't complain or give bad reviews or things like that. You get in front of it. I love this strategy. There are so many unique, fun, interesting ideas in this book on how to be a better sales copywriter. But most of all, it breaks down how you can do it easily by just using the steps that he outlines. I'm telling you, after you read this short book, you're going to want to start writing sales copy. You're going to want to start rewriting your sales pages on your website, your emails. You're going to get motivated because now you feel empowered with a toolbox of tools that can help you make more money.

9:59And the greatest thing about sales copy is that just the slightest improvement can make the world of a difference. So let's say your sales pages are converting right now at half a percent. If you just get that up to 1.5%, you just tripled your sales by just changing the words on the page. Pretty, pretty cool. That wraps up today's lesson. I hope you enjoyed today's must-read episode, The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy. I highly recommend you pick up this book. If you are on Kindle Unlimited, it's free on Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so you can read it for free. It's fantastic. Now, I'm a copywriting junkie.

10:36I have actual some of my favorite copywriting examples by Ogilvy hanging on my office wall. That's how much I love copy, but it's not the writing that I love. It's just what it can do. From about 20 years ago when I started my entrepreneurial journey, I was just so fascinated with these people that can just choose the right words and generate a great income from it. So go pick up a copy or grab it on Kindle Unlimited for free. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're new to writing, if this is intimidating to you, don't worry. So was I. I was absolutely horrible at writing when I started, or at least I thought I was, but it's like any skill.

11:12It's like riding a bike or learning how to ski or playing the piano or learning how to drive. Once you pick it up and you put some practice under your belt, it becomes second nature. You start to enjoy it. You start to realize, hey, this is not that hard, but it's not going to get any easier by doing nothing. It only gets easier when you try, when you just do small exercises every day, whether it's tweaking your sales pages, writing emails every day, blog posts, using these techniques and these strategies shared. There's a whole lot more in the book, by the way, of how he organizes ideas and thoughts through the index cards and all kinds of different strategies.

11:46So I highly recommend grab this book and get the practice going so that you get better and better every single day. It's a great investment in you and your business. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Wednesday's episode, Q &A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

12:16Thank you.