A few moths ago I get a call from a fellow wanting to buy a Cimex. When he told me his name I nearly dropped the phone. JIM WOLVERTON. I knew of Jim from previously being a Piranha Marketing member. Jim was one of Joe's "ghost writers". Well Mr. Jim walks among us. COOL!
Well a few days ago I invited Jim to look over my letter of introduction. This is a letter I used to get me past the gatekeeper on follow-up phone calls. Jim did a critique and added a few suggestions to steer the letter into more of a SALES letter. So below is Jim's critique. I learned a few good ideas here. You may see something you like too.
So here's the copy of my original letter (in italics) and you'll see Jim's critique below it.
Jim does this sort of thing for a living. So it was nice of him to give us some input on this. THANKS for sharing your ideas with us Jim.
MY ORIGINAL LETTER:
Dear [[First Name]],
Hi! My name is Rick Gelinas; I called your office today. My company has been providing commercial cleaning services to businesses just like yours since 1982. In the past 22 years I’ve learned a lot about caring for commercial floor coverings. And I would like to show you how your carpet can look like new again. We have a long list of clients throughout the Tampa Bay area who love our service. You will too!
Your Carpet Can Look Like New: I’m very proud of my company and my team of technicians. I still personally oversee day to day business operations and I personally guarantee that you will receive an outstanding service experience when you choose Kleenstep. Our Cimex/Releasit encapsulation cleaning process will restore your carpet’s appearance. The powerful planetary scrubbing machines that we use penetrate deep into the fiber to deliver effective and safe cleaning to all commercial floor coverings. The color of the fiber becomes muted when soil is present. It’s surprising to see how vibrant clean carpet can actually look!
Tired Of Recurring Spills And Ugly Carpets? So are we! For years it was just expected that commercial carpets would eventually “ugly out” and go to an early grave. Not any longer! We’re implementing exciting new technology that keeps the carpet clean longer between servicing. Instead of seeing the carpet quickly resoil after it’s been cleaned, carpets are now looking better with each cleaning. For years it was also expected that drink spills would continue to return following the cleaning. Well not anymore! Our unique soil crystallizing spill treatment completely eliminates those recurring spills. We guarantee the best looking carpets you’ve ever seen!
You Spend A Third Of Your Life At Work: Eight hours a day. That’s a third of your life. We recognize that your place of business is your home away from home. We can make it a nicer place to spend the day. Don’t you deserve to spend a third of your life in an attractive, clean and healthy environment?
Save A Bundle Of Money: A 5 year old carpet that has been cleaned on a regular basis will maintain a 92% appearance rating. Whereas a 5 year old carpet that has been neglected will only hold a 50% appearance rating (according to Allied Fibers). So it makes sense to take care of your carpeting investment. And I will save you money when it comes to taking care of your carpeting. Our rates are extremely reasonable. Again, 22 years of experience have taught me how to be very competitive. When we meet I can show you how much you can plan to save.
Why Settle For Poor Service? Your complete satisfaction is double guaranteed!
1. If the service experience is not the most outstanding that your company has ever received, we will rush to your location to make it right.
2. If you are still unimpressed, we will refund 100% of your money.
I’d Like To Offer You A FREE Carpet Inspection And A FREE Demo: When I stop by to meet with you briefly, I will show you exactly how we can work together to maintain your carpets. I will also provide you with a free carpet and maintenance inspection. And I will clean any 100 sq. ft. section of your carpet absolutely FREE (we’ll even clean your dirtiest section). This will give you an opportunity to see the quality of our service without obligation.
I’ll contact you in a few days to consider how we can provide clean & attractive carpet for your company!
Best Regards,
Rick Gelinas
JIM'S RESPONSE:
I see we are on the same page Rick. I am going to tell you everything I have been up to so we can bring each other up to speed and progress faster by sharing.
First off, this is the way I earn my living, so I don’t normally critique for free, this is something I normally charge $237 for. I am doing it for free here for 3 reasons: 1. I really like you (smooch, hug, hug). 2. I think we can help each other a lot and all of us end up making more money. 3. Maybe someone will see this and realize how valuable a critique is and hire me at jimwolverton@msn.com. Obviously, if I didn’t make a living doing this kind of stuff, my motives would be strictly charitable.
Keep in mind that everything here is just my opinion and you can use it or not, at your discretion. Furthermore, using it does not guarantee success, so test small. You may want to rewrite the letter after this critique and then ask me to critique again.
Also understand that critiquing is not to intended to belittle, only to improve, so it focuses more on what could be improved and only makes a slight mention of what is good. This is a very well written sales letter but you are going to see that I really blast it anyway.
I am going to write this as if you knew far less about marketing than you obviously do, because others are going to want to read it who may not know as much as you do Rick...
Where is your phone number? It is more likely that they will want to contact you than wait for you to contact them and if they are hot right now, don't make them wait and risk cooling off.
Okay, other than the phone number lets go top to bottom…
When soliciting businesses, the first thing you have to do is get your sales letter to the right party... the decision maker for carpet cleaning. That is really tough to do. But since you are calling first, you can find out who the decision maker is and their address, so you can mail them. I have been thinking about this a lot. Calling takes a lot of time, I tried it. I thought that if I could get the letter in the hands of the right person it would have infinitely better results.
So then I thought, why use mail? Faxing is free. If I am going to find out how to get to the right person and their name, maybe I could just say, "While I have you on the phone, could I get your fax number and extension? If I can fax you a diagram that shows you this new cleaning process it will make a lot more sense than describing it over the phone." They usually cut you off mid-sentence and give you their fax.
I have checked this out with my lawyer and with the district attorney (never trust a lawyer), there are stiff federal anti-fax laws for solicitations and they will tell you that you are supposed to have written permission to fax, but if you delve a little deeper into the law, you can actually fax specified transmissions as long as you have established contact and have implied consent. So my understanding is, this is well within the federal faxing laws, though you have to find out about local laws too.
Now, it turns out that the vast majority of the people who are in charge of carpet cleaning at sizable businesses are extremely open to contact. They don't get a whole lot of solicitations and they are very interested in making their life easier with a better cleaning method. So this is easy. To make it even better, it appears they hardly ever get a fax. The faxes are generally hand delivered to them. They stand out from the mail and receive a higher priority with these specific employees. They are less likely to be screened out. Plus, they can be sent instantly, even while you are on the phone with them.
For all those reasons, I suspect that if you are going to call first, faxing has to be better than mail. Give it a try Rick, I think we are talking about an easy way for you to make an extra million dollars next year, considering the population of your area.
So what you need is a phone solicitor who understands they are not selling anything, just finding the right party, getting permission to fax and the fax number. While you are at it, get their mailing address, phone number and extension and email address. I made a simple contact form up to make sure we collect all this information as we can get it.
Now I tried this a little. It worked fine. I used to be a telemarketer in another life and I have run a telemarketing room. The problem is that I hate it soooo bad that I cannot do it for any length of time and I have not yet convinced my partner that this is the way to Avarice, so we are stuck at an impasse for the moment. However, we may have found a solicitor recently.
Ok, so unless you come up with something clever, a fax letter need have no differences from a mailed letter, except that graphics slow faxes down, so you want to limit them and keep in mind that reproduction quality is going to suck. Stick with simple line drawings. So we can continue on with your letter critique just the same whether you are going to use fax or mail...
After you find the decision maker to mail to, you have to get it past the gatekeeper. Gatekeepers are usually secretaries, assigned to screen out un-requested mail. So at the top of the letter or the fax you have to hand write something like, "Ed, here is the fax you requested," or on a letter attach a sticky note that says, "Hi Ed, this is what you wanted to see, -Jim."
It occurred to me that different sized companies are going to have different types of gatekeepers. The tiny companies may not be able to afford a gatekeeper at all and all the mail is opened by the owner, who is the only decision maker. Small professionals will likely have the phone receptionist opening the mail and deciding what to hand to the doctor to look at. Small companies will often be completely mixed up when it comes to carpet cleaning and not have anyone who is clearly designated as being the person in charge of carpets, or more likely, the person in charge of carpet cleaning does not have the authority to make any purchases, therefore you may have more than one contact at that business you have to sell on your service. Still larger businesses will probably outsource their cleaning through janitorial companies and you have to sell them on your cleaning if possible. Then larger businesses will find it equitable to have their own in house cleaning, they will have a person clearly in charge of carpet cleaning and a budget to work with.
So I have been looking at how to target different sized businesses in different ways. What I really would like to do, is not call anyone, just send out a dumb sales letter to every business in my area and hire employees to rake in the cash. I doubt you can write a dumb sales letter that will frequently make it to the right decision maker without getting screened out by some gatekeeper along the way, but I am going to try anyway. I thought I would test it on companies that had 50 to 200 employees, because I figure that is enough to have a fair amount of carpet and still small enough that the letter has a chance of finding the right person.
So I am talking about two kinds of letters here: a smart letter or fax that is targeted to a specific individual that you have spoken with, and a dumb letter that just hits everyone and you hope some of them reach the right person.
I sense the apparent problem with your letter here is that it is somewhere in between...
It appears that you have contacted their company via phone, but the fact that the letter does not refer to any requested information or part of a conversation indicates that you may or may not have gotten in touch with the right person, or maybe you don't expect them to remember you. This is a slightly weak intro that may not find it's way to the right decision maker, make it past the gate keepers, and will not prompt the reader to say to him or herself, "Oh I asked for this, I better read a bit of it to see if I was really interested."
So ideally, what should happen is, the right person opens the letter and sees a hand-written sticky note at the top that says, "Hi Bob, this is the letter you asked for on Tuesday," -Rick. But maybe you just can't get that precise, maybe you have to omit the day. Maybe you have to omit other information. So in the worst case scenario, with a dumb letter, you have no idea who the decision maker is, you have not talked to them, they have never requested anything, but you can still increase readership with a sticky note that says, "I thought you should see this.--Rick" It's a dumb trick, but it helps.
Now let's move on to the salutation. With a smart letter it should say "Dear Ed," (as yours does) with a dumb one it should at least generate some kind of interest or tell the reader of a mutual kinship or interest such as, "Deal fellow Tampa area business owner,". Dan Kennedy teaches using a letter of endorsement from a professional in the same industry. So you might get an endorsement letter from an accountant that says, "Dear fellow accountant," which you then mail out to all accountants.
Next, the first line should refer to part of your conversation, so if you talked about golf, you should mention that. Anything that helped build a personal relationship at that time can now be used to break the ice in this letter. Yours starts off very appropriate with “Hi, my name is Rick Gelinas…” but I think you would get a lot farther with something more warm, personal and even sharing a common experience, “Hi, Rick Gelinas here, you and I just got off the phone and we were talking about golf down at 18 Holes… Anyway, here is what I was telling you about, that new cleaning technology that is going to save you so much money while giving you cleaner carpets all the time…” So this shows the difference between a smart letter and a dumb letter. With a dumb letter you can’t put a personal comment in there, cuz you never talked to nobody, but with your smart approach, you can, so take advantage of the homework you have already done.
Now you have used some tricks to help get the right person to read this, but all that is going to realistically do is give you a few seconds to grab their attention. They are going to tune out if you do not get them interested within at least a sentence, or two at most. This is why we use big bold headlines. The problem with headlines is that it starts to look like a sales letter instead of a personal letter. So if you want to avoid having it look like a sales letter, then put your headline on a line by itself, just don’t center it, make it big or bold or punctuate it. It’s still a headline… The headline should be their most compelling reason to read this letter.
Here are some ideas for headlines: “New cleaning technology gives you cleaner carpets for less,” “How to impress your boss without lifting a finger,” “Free demo proves on your own carpets, before your own eyes, that new cleaning system restores old carpets and blows anything you have ever seen before away,” “Discover how to make your work life healthier and more enjoyable with nothing more than a phone call.”
Notice the headlines talk to the person about what reading this letter is going to do for them. It’s not about you or your company. It’s about what’s in it for them if they read on.
If the headline does it’s job, you have a few more seconds to grab their attention and now we move into the body copy…
We always feel compelled to tell people who we are and what we represent right away, but this is probably not the best way to hold their attention. So I prefer to save that for a few paragraphs later and start now telling them the most exciting things about what we are able to do for them. So I would insert a first paragraph that says something about what this new technology is doing for people.
There are a lot of other triggers we could talk about that we could start off with, but a couple that would work well here are mystery and story telling. Mystery is where you give them a hint about something interesting but then tell them you are not going to tell them about it yet. Like, “Best of all, there is a way you can get this absolutely free, but I am not going to tell you about it just yet.”
Storytelling is where instead of telling them the facts you rephrase those facts in the form of a story. A very good kind of story is a story of personal discovery. In a very similar sales letter to this I rephrased what you are telling them in the first few paragraphs by simply saying, “I couldn’t believe it when I heard about this new cleaning technology so I had to buy the equipment and try it for myself. I was amazed. First I tried…” That also allowed me to weave in some paraphrased testimonials. So in this first paragraph or two you want to use some tricks to hold their attention for a bit. THEN you tell them your name and company info.
Your letter clearly follows the PAS selling technique. A good choice. You are presenting them with a Problem they face, Agitating by showing how bad the problem really is and then showing how you and only you are the Solution to their problem.
However, you must prove your points better. It is not enough to speak the truth about how you are able to help them, you have to prove it with illustrations, facts and statistics, quotes from authorities, quotes from their peers who have tried it, guarantees, etc. You do some of this, but you need more. You would do well to spend a little time telling the story about how this process was developed, because that will prove that it really is a new and effective process and not just the same old thing dressed up with a new name.
You did well to make an offer such as the free demo. A powerful offer can greatly raise response. The more compelling the better. But you also have to think about what is in it for them here too. I mean, sure they want to have cleaner carpets, but is that the most exciting thing in their life? Maybe we could get better response if we offered five free lottery tickets too, or a free mini-vacation voucher (your cost $7), a free round of golf, tickets to Izzy’s Pizza Buffet, a barbeque set, an executive handbag, an autographed picture of me, etc.
This lacks a ‘call to action.’ You have to tell them exactly what you want them to do and motivate them to do it right now. For example, “I just bought 20 rounds of golf (9 holes) and the first twenty businesses to call me and ask for a free demo get a round of golf on me. Will you be one of them? You can schedule it for whenever you are ready, but you have to call me right now at _________.”
Write like you talk or like John Wayne talked in movies. Rick, you speak too properly for good copywriting so emulate the Duke. Stop always using complete sentences, proper English and only real words. Use “Yuck” when you talk about dirt. Use one word paragraphs for kicks, etc. It is far more interesting to read a letter from a character with a squinky eye than it is to read a letter from some stuffy ol’ English professor. You’ll hold their attention, Pilgrim.
Appearance:
As long as your sales letter holds their interest it can be any length, but bore them for more than a few seconds at any point and you are dead. Your sales letter needs to be exactly long enough to tell your whole story, not a word more, not a letter less.
But there are other keys to holding their attention and I see you are aware of this. You bolded the first sentence in each paragraph wisely. Use bold, underline and italics liberally to highlight the most important words. The best written letters can be speed read by ONLY reading bold, italics and underline and the reader will still get the important points. This is extremely important in letters to businesses. You must allow them to shortcut the reading. If you try to make them read it all, they will likely put it down at some point and stop reading. Proper use will keep pulling them back in when you lose their attention and skim readers will keep finding tidbits that they stop to read until eventually they get interested to stop and go back to the beginning and read the whole thing. This process will happen virtually every time. So I think you skipped the tools of italics and underline as well as missed a couple of points in the body of the paragraphs.
Paragraphs have to be short, you do well with this. But the first few paragraphs have to be really short if possible.
Paragraphs are more reader friendly if they are indented. The whole text is more readable if there is a little more space between the lines. You will find that a one page letter single spaced does not get as much readership as the same letter on two pages, double spaced.
You are missing a P.S. This is a very important tool because it gets read almost as much as the headline. The P.S. should restate your offer, call to action, and maybe your most important benefits.
In summary, this is a well done letter that could use a typical rewrite for best results. You will probably get results as is, but may get significantly better results by trying a few of the above suggestions. Good luck.
Thanks Jim! 
Rick Gelinas
