How to Sell - Creating Hope

Selling products is as much about selling the function of the product as it is about selling the hope that the product will solve whatever problem the customer has. While the right name can immediately get a customers attention, your sales message is just as important as what your label your product.

Selling hope - the idea that the product you’re selling will solve the customers problem - is the simple most effective way to sell a product. Of course there are a lot of way to sell hope, and our previous example, Automated Cash Formula, employs most of the techniques to sell hope.

Personal Identification

The author of our example sales letter does a great job of creating a personal connection between the author and the reader: by explaining how an average person learned how to make money online (in this case, he links a blue collar worker - a window washer - with making millions). This connection - using a blue collar worker - is one of the strongest connections the author can make:

1. It creates a sense of familiarity between the author and reader, as the reader believes that both she and the author have walked down the same road (so to speak).
2. It removes the social class disconnection that many lower-class people feel towards the upper class. In this case, the author comes across as just an average guy who got lucky and wants to share that luck with you - not as an experienced businessman who is trying to sell you a product.

Simple Outlines

The Automated Cash Formula sales letter provides simple outlines on what the product does - and does not - deliver. Aside from the obvious attention-grabbing aspect of these outlines, they provide two functions:

• Reinforce the ideas that the product fixes the problems the customer has
• Give the reader a quick overview of what to expect in the product

Previous Failures

The sales letter outlines several examples of why people fail (in this case, why people fail to make money online) and then provides several examples of why this product helps the customer not fail. in the majority of cases, your customer is going to be coming to you with past experiences involving your products niche. So by listing - and accounting for - previous failures, the sales letter accomplishes two things:

• Customers who already have experience in your niche are going to feel a bit of relief knowing that you’ve answered these concerns for them.
• By answering to previous failures, you can easily discredit other products

Discredit Other Products

One of the strongest ways to create hope in your particular product is to list the advantages your item has over competing products. Don’t worry, you don’t need a specific feature list for every product you’re competing with - you only need a general list of concerns that the customer is going to have (this is usually specific to your niche, although other general concerns could be address; for example, addressing the concern of going bankrupt in a money making sales letter).

If you’re lucky, you’ll acquire a customer that will have had experience with previous (failed) products. In this instance, you could make a sale simply by reaffirming their fears and then assuring the customer that your product doesn’t fall short of their hopes.

A Good Story

Everyone loves a good story, and customers reading a sales letter are no exception. if you have a great rags-to-riches story, detailing that story can more closely associate you with your customers. Of course, not everyone has a great rags to riches story - most of them are boring “I worked 16 hours a day to get to where I am.” In these cases a story is still important!

• Stories, no matter how boring they are, still create a more personal bond than any straight-sales technique will ever generate. The more personal the bond between the author and the reader, the more hope a customer is willing to place in a product.
• Stories allow for lead-ins to “action shots” (see below) and testimonials

Action Shots

Everyone needs proof that a product works. Simply put, you cannot sell a product without “proving” that it works - even if the proof seems flaky to you. Automated Cash Formula has some great examples of action shots in action: account statements showing obscene amounts of money being withdrawn and deposited.

Action shots simply serve to reaffirm, visually, what the reader has been told through words.

Testimonials

While you can spout off anything and everything in an attempt to sell a product, nothing proves just how effective a product is than unsolicited testimonials. Are they difficult to get? Sure, but there are tricks you can use to get testimonials from users (you’ll have to wait for our article on that later).

Why are testimonials so effective? Up until this point in the sales pitch, you’ve been describing what you - the salesman - think of the product. While you can be the greatest salesman in the world, customers are going to pass up on your amazing offer if there is the slightest bit of doubt in their minds about your products effectiveness. Testimonials serve to reinforce the hope - and eliminate the doubt - that your product is simply the best solution for their problem.

Money-Back Guarantee

it should be obvious by now what a money-back guarantee gives a user. In case it’s not clear, let me state it bluntly: hope. A money-back guarantee helps eliminate doubt and build hope in three ways:

• First, it eliminates the doubt that you’re going to take the customers money and run
• Second, it builds hope by reassuring the customer that you’re a valid business venture
• Finally, it reassures the customer that their money will be well spent, and if they feel otherwise they can get it back.

While you may think that a money-back guarantee will cost you money in the long run, you would be wrong: most of the people that order a product will never return it or request a refund, either because they love the product, or because they simply forget about it and move on with their lives.

There are other ways you can create hope in your sales letter, but just remember a simple rule: in order to create hope you must remove doubt.

Take a read through the Automated Cash Formula sales letter to see an implementation of the techniques we talked about in this article.