What Gary Halbert Taught Me About Writing Sales Letters

If you want to write sales letters or website copy that will actually get read and motivate people to take action, here’s an often overlooked step.
I know this is just my option, but I’m a believer that far too much time and effort is spent on writing and far too little is devoted to identifying the facts about your product or service. The reason this is important is because the more you develop a detailed list of facts and their corresponding benefits, the better the final result will be.
But hardly anyone is willing to do that. Why? Probably because it takes time, it takes thinking, and we’re a society in which patience is in extremely short supply. But I’m a believer that if you’ll take this step, your sales copy will have a richness to it that will enable your readers to visualize the results that your product or service promise.
Marketing mastermind Gary Halbert used to suggest writing down one feature or fact about what you’re selling on a 3X5 index card. He’d make fun of you (an believe me that wasn’t a pleasant experience) if you weren’t able of come up with at least 3-dozen. I always found that the first 5 or 6 were pretty easy to come up with. But by the time I got to 24, I felt the well had run completely dry. But there would be Gary, pushing, pushing, pushing. “Come on you poor excuse for a marketer” he rasped, “Dig, what else do you offer?”
And the interesting thing was this. The most compelling facts, the ones that actually resonated the most with the reader, the ones that hooked their attention and motivated people to take action, were invariably among the last group of facts I came up with.
Everyone thinks that copywriters sit down and just “start writing”, As if they had a magic pen or something. Or they think that “anyone can do it.” A mindset similar to-“I can boil water therefore I am a chef”. Hardly anyone gets the hard work that goes into writing sales copy that actually achieves it’s purpose of motivating people to take action. But I digress.
Once you have your list of features or facts prepared, you need to turn them into something that will interest your reader. Remember the old saying, “Nobody buys grass seeds, they really buy the promise of beautiful lawns. So for each fact we need to turn them into benefits. Or, as one wag puts it, the answer to, “Why should I care?”
For example, I am working with a HR consultant who offers a brand new assessment tool for hiring sales people. Suppose to be a good predictor of sales success. One fact about this assessment tool is that it has been tested (or as they say in psychological terms, “validated”) on over 15,000 sales people. OK, that’s an interesting fact . So now we have to determine what the benefit is, the “why should I care?” factor. So here goes:
You should care because this means that you no longer have to rely on your gut instinct. You should care because if the big boss wants to hire some jerk but the assessment says you shouldn’t, you’ve got evidence to support your decision. You should care because this means that whether you’re hiring one or 100 reps it’s a good predictor of success. You should care because it means that the test has been around a while, unlike all those other assessment tools that pop and then disappear into the morning mist.
Validated by 15,000 sales people is a fact. OK, but not a compelling reason to use it. No longer having to rely on your gut instincts, (which make most anyone who has to hire someone very uncomfortable) is a real benefit. That’s what you want to emphasize in your sales letters and on your website.
And yes, I realize that you’ve heard all this before. But before you dismiss it as a “nice reminder of something I already know”, let me ask you to take a look at your sales letters or website home page. How compelling is it? How chocked full of “why should I care?” benefits does it contain? Remember that there’s a world of difference between knowing something and actually implementing something. Thus, perhaps now is a good time to refresh some of your stale sales copy. If you do, don’t forget to compile that list of facts and benefits before you sit down and write.