Once you have your foot in the door, you can start selling. No foot, no sale.

Those are the words of a great 20th century expert on communicating. And he was right.

When I was a child it was quite common for door-to-door salesmen (usually they were men) to arrive at the door. They could be selling encyclopedias, vacuum cleaners, cleaning products, burglar alarms … usually something that needed demonstrating. Once the salesman had his foot in the door, it was virtually impossible to get rid of him.

How we hated it! But the salesman knew his commission depended on his getting in the house. He really didn’t care whether we liked it or not! All he cared about was making a sale. And more often than not, the householder ended up buying, if only because it was the only way to get rid of him.

Victor Kiam the boss of Remington was known as a super salesman. He tells how as a youngster learning the trade he was told to present his product to an audience likely to be bored. He got hold of a live monkey and kept it hidden in a velvet cage which he took into the room with him. Once in, he let the monkey out and allowed it to run loose among the audience.

Of course, they all collapsed – some with laughter, some in panic. Victor simply shouted his message “Buy Pepsodent!,” scooped up his monkey and left the room.

When you’re writing your sales message as a copywriter, just remember ONE thing. The people reading DO NOT WANT to be sold anything. They MAY want the benefits of what you have to sell them, but they don’t know this yet.

You have a split second to get their attention. If you don’t get it, they will bin your sales letter, or surf away with the click of a mouse. Quick! Stop them! Get your foot in the door!

How?

I mentioned that the prospects have no desire to hear what you have to say. But they DO have desires and needs, which you are using your product to tap into. (If your product DOESN’T tap into people’s needs and desires, why are you wasting your time trying to sell it?)

Top of the list of most people’s needs and desires are:

· Financial freedom
· Love
· Self-improvement.
· Health.

To get your foot in the door as a copywriter, you have to make it instantly clear in your headline that what you are offering satisfies one or more of these desires. I say “in your headline”, because that’s what the headline’s for. If it doesn’t make this clear, people won’t read any further. So you’ll never get to demonstrate your product.

The headline “How to Fire your Boss” was once very effective for this reason (it’s a bit overworked now).

A dating coach site had a headline that started off:

“Ssshhh! My girlfriends would kill me if they knew I was about to reveal…”

This aroused great curiosity in people who were already looking for ways of attracting the opposite sex!

One famous salesletter for a financial institution had a new penny pasted to it. The headline read:

“It is a Marvelous thing – the power of money to make money.

This little penny saved since the beginning of the …. Association would today be worth $75.

That is the way money grows.”

This letter aroused an amazing amount of attention. That really was the foot in the door.

You get the picture. If your headline doesn’t grab people’s attention in the first split second, the rest of your message is a waste of time.

Remember – no foot, no sale.

Article Source: http://www.articleset.com