Writing A Sales Letter: Practice Tips On Making The Pitch © Mario Churchill

The meat of any sales letter lies in its ability to make readers pull out their wallets and buy a product or service. Making a sales pitch is difficult enough off paper; on paper, it has to be quick, terse, and convincing. A sales pitch has to be brief, but neither too short so that it appears hurried, nor too long so that it becomes less and less believable as the sentences run by. A sales pitch also has to be eager, but neither too eager so that the reader is tired out reading it, nor too staid so that the reader ends up bored to death.

Writing a sales letter pitch is difficult, but you can practice writing it by following these simple tips.

- If you are in the marketing or sales department of a company, writing a sales letter will be inevitable business for you. You might not be assigned the job at once, but this should be no excuse for you not to practice. Do not wait until you are given a sales letter to write. Start practicing, so that when you finally get sales letter writing duties, you are already an expert at the art and craft.

- Buy a good book of style and usage. Writing a sales letter does not merely mean putting together sentences and disregarding grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules. You need to watch your language, and now, more than ever, simply because it is your only weapon in fighting your big sales battles. A poorly-written sales letter can turn off customers faster than a poor product or service. After all, customers will not care about what you sell until they know that you care about them first. If you cannot care for your grammar and writing skills, then why should they buy anything from you? The last thing anyone needs is a careless person, and your customers know that.

- Practice the craft on products or services that you are familiar with. Start practicing writing sales letters on a product or service that you actually like and use. Although this sounds easy, it can actually be difficult. How do you make a product or service sound good without sounding like you are hollering your praises out? How can your favorite shampoo sell without you having to showcase how beautiful your hair has turned out? How can you make your potential customers get that spa treatment of their dreams without you sounding like the spa paid you millions to make the endorsement?

- The best writers are those who can sound interested in something that they do not even remotely like. This can be a good practice exercise for you if you have already sharpened your writing skills for the previous exercise. Pick a product or service that you do not like, and try to endorse it. This can prepare you for the times when you might be assigned to do a sales letter on a product or service that you do not believe in; you can always opt out and tell your boss that you do not want to get in the way of your principles, but this option is one of the biggest no-no's in the sales and marketing world.

- As soon as you know how to get your sales pitch out, it's time to trim it down. The best sales pitches are no more than a few hundred words long. When writing a sales letter, you need to keep your words convincing, but to a minimum. Remember, not all your readers have all the time in the world to listen to what you say. You need to make your little letter worth their while.

Look back at all your previous exercises and count how many words you used in describing a product or service that you liked, or did not like. How many words did you use? Did you use five hundred or two thousand words? Keep exercising: write the same sales pitch over again, with fewer words this time, but with the meat of your pitch still in it. Keep on trimming your pitch until you are left with nothing but the convincing summary of your endorsement.

Writing a sales letter can be difficult if you do not know how to make a sales pitch. As with any other letter, you need to be formal and respectful, but not stiff and boring. You need all your skills as a writer and salesperson, and you need to put them all into practice. So what are you waiting for? Pick up that pen, or get to that keyboard, and start writing a sales
letter!

About the Author: Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information checkout http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com and http://www.killercopywritingblog.com