Why Most Sales Letters Never Convert (And the One Fix That Changes Everything)

0:00Uh, if, if I asked the question, okay, are there specific, um, points that need to be on a sales letter? Like, is there a five part, you know, the five part step, the 10 step part, whatever it is to a news. Okay. Here it is. What is that? That's one, two. I can't even.

0:17Jim Edwards:Those are the building blocks of a great sales letter. Don't worry. Great sales letter.

0:32And we're back with the king himself, the king of marketing, Jim Edwards. And I'm excited because today is all about the written word, the sales letter. So I'm going to jump right into it and ask the biggest question. What makes a great converting sales letter and how do we get one?

0:52Jim Edwards:Wow, that's a two-part question. So what makes a great high converting sales letter? It is a sales letter that gets the right people to stop what they're doing and pay attention to your message. And then it guides them through a natural, called a sales presentation, a sales argument down to a call to action that they can engage with and pull out their wallet and give you money without you interacting with them at all. That is what you want. In other words, your sales letter is your 24 hour day, seven day a week. 365 day a year salesperson that doesn't call in sick, always gives the perfect presentation every single time, doesn't ask for a raise and is all around awesome.

1:39Jim Edwards:That is what a great sales letter is. Now, the next question might be, what can you use them for? You can use them for pretty much anything. And then somebody might say, well, is there a limit on a price point as to what somebody would be able to sell. Like, you know, I could use a sales letter all the way up to $676.99. And at that point, it's got to be a sales call. I will tell you that I personally have had sales letters, that the sales letter did the entire sales job, and we sold something that was$8 ,000. Okay, so does that mean$8 ,000 is the upper limit? No, that means that's the most, if I can, I mean, I'm, that's like the highest price thing I've done with a sales letter that required no interaction, like no sales call, no webinar, no nothing.

2:37Jim Edwards:Okay. Yeah. I think there, I do. I mean, I could have a, and I'm open to saying it, I can have a fixed closed mindset on that. I think there is a limit, but I think there's also tons of nuances in there like what who's the sales letter for how how how comfortable how much are they in your pipeline what have they done before they got to this newsletter before we get all the way there because i know we're going to dive right in i'm just i'm excited to get right into it um i want to ask you the question too is as we're thinking about what makes a great sales letter is also well what makes a bad sales letter you know why would a sales letter not convert as well, because I think there's a lot of people that write sales letter thinking it's going to change their lives and it does nothing.

3:21And there's a fundamental piece before I believe a sales letter that must be met before the sales letter to even work. I'm just wondering your thoughts on that.

3:30Jim Edwards:So what makes a sales letter work is you know who your avatar is. You've got your, uh, you've got your offer planned out really, really well. And you can answer the question for them inherently, why the hell should I buy from you? Okay. That's, I mean, if we're really getting basic, it comes down to your avatar, your offer, and you. And you got to know their emotional hot buttons so that you can press the right levers to get them to say yes in the sales letter. You got to have an offer that has a value that's all the way up here and a perceived cash that you're asking for down here with like hell, that's a hell of a deal.

4:13Jim Edwards:And then how you factor into this you as the attractive character you as the company. this is where your story ties in has to make sense to buy from you and also make sense that you are able to provide and deliver on this offer i mean this is just really getting down to basics um and so if you don't know the avatar you're not going to say the right stuff so they're going to feel like you're at best you're talking at them rather than with them um if your offer sucks well your offer sucks and nobody's going to want it. Okay. It's like, man. And then if you don't make sense, if it doesn't make sense, something's going to be off.

4:56Jim Edwards:Your story doesn't quite jibe. It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't pass the sniff test. So it's going to translate into all the mechanical crap of, you know, your headline sucks. You're not able to use problem agitate, eliminate, solves the right way. Your offer stack, you don't even have one. It's just all the things, you know, it's too expensive. That's the biggest thing. And it sounds pretty good, but it's too expensive. You know what somebody is actually saying when they say that? Oh, well, in sales, I believe is that you haven't gotten to justify the value. I mean, Correct. Right. Right.

5:37Right. Exactly. If a value exceeds price, you'll never have the objection. Right.

5:42Jim Edwards:Correct. 100 percent. So. So anyway, that's why a sales letter doesn't work. Your headline sucks. Your offer sucks. Your story sucks. Your call to action sucks. Pretty much you just suck and need to go work in a billion dollar industry where you put on a hairnet stand a window and say, would you like a hot apple pie with that and perhaps some fries? or or the the new one which is welcome to starbucks what can i get started for you today so i mean it's it's this is important to learn i think the first one is is where i see a lot of business owners especially in a startup like guys that are doing 50k months even i've seen this where the avatar they just don't actually understand the avatar they're speaking to They think they do, but there's like that nuance.

6:29There's that ideology is like, do you know the avatar's problem more? Can you speak to them like they are speaking to themselves in their head? And I think even though people think that they are, they're still, I always, there's like a mismatch just by a millimeter. And as you know, in this especially competitive world we're in, and we're talking about written word. We're off a millimeter on a long form sales letter that that goes a long way. Yeah.

6:58Jim Edwards:And there's, there's two reasons why people do that. One, they confuse demographics with psychographics. So they say, Oh, my avatar is a dentist who's 44 years old, makes$269 ,000 a year, has 1.2 wives, 2.3 children. I just feel bad for 0.3 Timmy. You know, that, that 0.3 kid is like, he's the shorty, but it's like no demographics help you find people meaning like how do i find them to put a message in front of them psychographics are the emotional hot buttons that get them to um that get them to react and get them to engage in a conversation so what happens though is that they even if you get into the psychographics, a lot of it is assumed.

7:46Jim Edwards:So like, oh, my avatar are dentists with their own practice. Well, they assume a whole bunch of stuff about that, but never express it. And about the only thing they do is they'll, this is the ones who are real crafty. They'll say, well, what makes them wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat? Yeah. Okay. Well, that can be a whole bunch of stuff, but again, there's short-term desires, there's long-term desires, there's problems, there's objections, there's the hidden greedy thing that they really, really, really want. There are questions they need to address. And situationally, depending on what you're selling, depending on what their level of awareness is, you have to know more than just what wakes them up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

8:36Jim Edwards:So this is where investing some time up front and really understanding this can feed you for decades because you understand them better than they understand themselves. Because most people never go below that the surface level thing. And the problem is, is that most of the AI stuff that you're going to mess around with is only going to be surface level. you know you go to ai you know what are the main what wakes a dentist up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat ai and it'd be like well his wife finding out about his mistress that is his receptionist well wait a minute you know it's it's you know not making payroll and all this other stuff you know the dude anyway yeah no i love it no i hear it run down i think it's a it's we're talking in sales we're talking you know it's almost sounding like what i call is the three levels of pain, right?

9:33So there's like the surface level pain. So I always talk about traditional business owners, surface level pain being Facebook ads, all my Facebook ads aren't working. And I say you're gonna go sell guy on this face by ads are not working. Good luck. Okay, the second layer is their financial business pain, what I say in sales, right? So okay, their Facebook ads are not working. As a result, they're not making the dollars. As a result, they're having, you know, having a hard time paying payroll as a result uh they can't scale they can't figure it out you know they're frustrated they're burning dollars you know aka but the real level right is that personal pain you get to that personal pain that's where the sale happens well as a result of the facebook guys not working and not having the money right i'm going to go as extreme here because we're on the podcast but you know it's like how do you sleep at night you know what do you hear does your wife know this is happening like how long does a business have before it ends did you ever think that you'd be in a position like this you didn't know you'd be done in 30 days like we get to that personal level where you need to obviously gain trust before you get there that's where the

10:38Jim Edwards:sales made and i'm how do you feel about the fact that mark zuckerberg is the only one making money in your business yeah well there you go yeah right so i think what i'm getting at is the same thing on maybe on the written word, maybe a little different, but this is where the sales letter comes in. Yeah. You got to be able to hit the stuff that makes them respond. You got it. They have to read that letter and say, holy crap. It's like, he knows me. There was a, the Ron White did a thing where he's, he tells a story about sitting on a beanbag chair in his underwear in front of the TV and he's eating Cheetos and the late night preacher comes on and he's like, you know, you're feeling this.

11:24Jim Edwards:It's like, yeah, that's me. He's like, you know, you're a sinner. Yeah, that's me. And he said, and now you want to get up and you want to call us on the phone and give us money on your credit card. And he's like, wow, they almost had me, you know, that, that kind of thing. You, you got to take it all the way to the end so that they're like, yeah, I got it. I got it. Yeah. They know me. It's like, this was made for me. And the only way you can do that is to know their hot buttons, know the stuff that makes them respond. And then if you do that, creating the offer is actually a lot easier. See, most people start with a product and go in search of an audience.

12:04Jim Edwards:And that's why they fail. But if you define your audience that you're going to serve, figure out what their real problems are, their real desires are and all the other things in between short term long term all that good stuff and then make them an offer they can't refuse and then explain why you're the only one who can deliver this in this way you're ahead of 99 of the people out there because nobody does that 100 100 uh it's a guy and it goes to me is like again i tell people sell it before you build it because if you oh yeah So many people build thinking it's going to sell and then they spend money, time.

12:46And then they spend, the worst part is because they spend all that time building it. They also spend so much time and money trying to sell it because they're doing the loss. There's a word for loss.

12:58Jim Edwards:It's the law of sunk cost. Yeah, the sunk cost fallacy, right? And it doesn't work. So back, I want to get clear because it is news sales letters. uh if if i ask the question okay are there specific um points that need to be on a sales letter like is there a five part you know the five part step the 10 step part whatever it is to a news okay here it is what is that that's one two i can't even those are the building blocks of a great sales letter don't worry a great sales letter so how can we how can we give the audience such a powerful session here that they can be able to understand it and potentially go even start working on their newsletter by the end of this.

13:42Jim Edwards:Sure. So you mean their sales letter, not their newsletter? Sorry, sales letter. So, so here's the thing. You got to understand that a sales letter. Okay. What is a sales letter? It's it's salesmanship in print. How long is a sales letter? You know, those big long sales letters don't freaking work. They're bullshit. it. Okay. Slow down, Scooter. A sales letter is as long as it needs to be. All right. So what I'm going to do is teach you the building blocks that go into an effective sales letter. And then you can expand or contract. And I say it's like one of those accordions from the Lawrence Welk show.

14:16Jim Edwards:You probably don't remember Lawrence Welk, but I mean, those ones where they squeeze them and do and do the stuff, it can be as long or as short as you need it to be. It just needs to have the following stuff. So the number one thing that a great sales letter needs to have is a headline. Okay. It starts with a headline and really it starts with a headline package. And so the way to think of this is what is the headline package? Well, it's usually a prehead, a head and a sub headline. So the prehead, the purpose of that is to call out to the audience or to call out to a pain or problem. So attention, real estate agents, attention, high producing real estate agents, attention, frustrated real estate agents, or you can do regarding your next commission check.

15:07Jim Edwards:Okay. So you can, you're calling out in such a way that people go, oh shit, that's me. Okay. So now you're going to have the sub headline, which is a call out to the audience. Then you're going to have the headline, which is typically a call out for the problem or the solution. And this is where you have to know the awareness level of your audience. Because if you're talking to people who have no freaking clue who you are, what you do, or even if there's a solution out there, then you have to call out to the problem that you know that they know that they have. So if I'm selling something to a bunch of realtors that don't know who I am and don't know a possibility, I can say, are you sick and tired of crappy commission checks month after month?

15:57Okay, well, yeah.

16:00Jim Edwards:Okay, that's all I'm trying to do is just move them from one thought to the next to the next. And then the sub headline is typically where you are going to introduce or link up with whatever it is the thing is that you're selling. So it would be, you know, attention, realtors frustrated by low commissions. Are you sick and tired of crappy commission checks month after month? New webinar reveals how to massively increase commissions with zero advertising expense. And that would typically be in a parentheses. Okay. Well, now, if you're a real estate agent, I've got you. You're, okay, tell me more.

16:49Jim Edwards:Yeah. At this point, our headline package has done its job. Now, we've stopped the scroll. We've stopped the person. Okay. We've engaged them and we've pre-framed them for what's coming next. So now in your sales letter, this is where you're going to have your intro. And depending on how this thing's formatted, it could be, you know, as simple as, you know, from the desk of Jim Edwards regarding how I got 52 listings my first year in real estate with zero ad spend, dear frustrated real estate professional. Okay. That's got some kind of a little intro that the transition from the headline to what I'm going to start telling them.

17:42Jim Edwards:Now, that's more of a traditional letter thing. It could even just be as simple as here's how dot dot dot okay so and depends on the verbiage it might be you know how but literally is as easy as this just transitioning here's how hey let me tell you a quick story okay typically you're gonna have either a shocking statement here or a story or both okay and the shocking statement is designed to just further shock them out of their hypnosis. You know, so this would be, you know, most real estate agents are going to die broke working a part-time job at a grocery store. Will you be one of them? I sure hope not.

18:38Jim Edwards:Let me see if we can fix that. I mean, that's like, holy crap. I mean, you know, this is where you punch people in the face. One of the most brutal ones I've ever used was I had a shocking, the first line was it's enough to make you want to puke. That was literally my thing. I made like$20 ,000 with that sales letter in the first two hours selling a$97 product. This is not an income claim. Your results may vary. So next you want to tell, typically you're going to tell a story. okay you're going to tell a story either about yourself or about them or about someone else who's like them hey let me tell you a quick story about a guy who had two houses to sell and only 30 days to sell them he only he didn't have enough equity to sell with a realtor on one of them and he was too stubborn to pay the commission on the other one and he was able through social engineering and using a very specific phone script was able to sell both of those houses in less than 30 days and make a move to florida saving twelve thousand dollars in commission but more importantly he launched a real estate empire i'm like do i have your attention still are you like wondering what the hell's going on yeah okay well then i've done what i needed to do with the story so i i want to tell a story that is going to grab their attention and it's going to engage them and set the stage okay so the other headline intro i just want to make sure we have headline headline intro shocking statement and a story yeah headline okay now at At this point, as far as mechanically, in here in the middle of this, you could have basically right underneath the headline package, you could have a video.

20:44Jim Edwards:And the video would basically, I mean, you see a lot of videos on stuff now. The purpose of the video is to sell the high reactors. so this is where you would have a video script that would basically say hey if this is you and this is what you want this is what i got and by the way this is who i am and this is why you should buy now that's literally the i'm i'm simplifying it but that's what it is okay if this is you this is and this is what you want this is what i got this is who i am this is why you you'd buy it now. And then there's a button there that, that will shoot them down the page to see your offers.

21:23Traditional VSL is what you're correct. Yes.

21:27Jim Edwards:Okay. So now we got our story and then you're going to use, you've heard a problem agitate solve, right? Yes. Okay. Introduce a problem, agitate the problem, introduce the solution. That is actually not the best formula. Okay. It's problem, agitate, eliminate, solve. So introduce the problem. Here's the problem. Most real estate agents can't sell their way out of a wet paper sack. Most real estate agents don't understand that their real job is not selling houses. is it's finding people consistently who want to either buy or sell a house. That's the problem. Okay. If you're struggling right now, it's because you can't find enough potential buyers and sellers.

22:21Jim Edwards:Agitate the problem. Yeah. Okay. If you don't solve this problem, you are going to suffer. You are going to, on average, make less money than someone who manages a grocery store. They sold you on the idea of being a real estate agent with high commissions, but what they didn't tell you was all the stuff you were going to have to do that had nothing to do with selling houses. Because it's not about selling a house, it's about pricing it right and putting it in the MLS. If you can do that, you're going to make money. So you need to figure out how to find more buyers and sellers, or you're going to die poor.

23:01Jim Edwards:Okay, we've agitated that. Now we eliminate most people. So here's the solution. It's my, you know, two extra listing appointments a week. Now we need to eliminate. Not poop, but poop all over them. Eliminate all over them. Now, here's what you need to understand. Most real estate agents think the way to solve this problem is one of the following ways. Run more money, spend more money on ads. okay problem is if ads worked for real estate there'd be one person in town running ads making all the money at more ads don't work some people think it's cold calling i'm just going to call more people problem is with the change in the laws you call a fizz boat you might go to jail some people think that it's working your sphere of influence but how many times can you call your friends and family to ask them for a referral before they treat you like an Amway salesman and shun you at everything.

24:03Jim Edwards:So if it's not about spending more money on ads, if it's not spending more money cold calling, if it's not more spending more time putting your friends and family in a headlock, what can you or worst of all, doing nothing and hoping things change, which is pretty much is the theme of most real estate agents. What's the solution? Well, luckily for you, there is a solution. So now we introduce the solution and you're like, man, he took like three or four minutes to explain that. Calm down, chuckles. These can be paragraphs or these can be a line or this can be a single sentence. Okay. It's the important thing is that you're going through the hoops.

24:47Jim Edwards:You're going through the little gates. You're using the building blocks. So now We introduce the solution. How do we introduce the solution? Hey, luckily for you, there's a solution. The, you know, something, something, two extra listings a week, whatever thing. Okay. And then you're going to give them four or five bullets of what this does for them. Not what it is, but what it does for them. Okay. So solution plus four to five bullets of payoff of what they're going to get from it. So then what you're going to do is you're going to tell them, I know that sounds amazing, but it's true. Here's exactly what it is.

25:44Jim Edwards:So this is where you basically explain what the product does for them in more detail using bullets. This is after a solution. We're now going to detail of what the product will do, what the offer is or what the product will do. No, what the product is and what it does for them. so it's it's kind of like you know it so it's the the the real estate listing mega kit and you're gonna have is this like when you're talking about a stack or no this is not the stack yet okay yeah okay okay we're telling them basically what it is yeah okay okay and we're using feature benefit meaning. Now, they're going to say, as soon as you start telling them all that stuff, after you're done telling them and the ether clears a little bit, it's going to be two questions.

26:45Jim Edwards:Who the hell are you? And has this worked for anybody besides you? So after I've given you those bullets about the thing, then it's going to be like, hey, now by now you're probably asking,

26:58Jim Edwards:who the hell are you okay well i'm jim edwards i've wrote the book for you know selling your home alone i've written copywriting secrets um i took 52 listings my first year in real estate with zero ad spend um you know blah blah blah blah blah and but don't just take my word for it Take a look at this. And then after you tell them who you are, you show them testimonials. Now, the cool thing about that credibility block is you can flip those either way. So I can tell you, I can also say, hey, you know what? I tell them all the cool things that this thing's going to do. And then I can say, hey, now, but don't just take my word for it.