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Start writing sales letters with Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Sales Letter Checklist

“There’s no business problem a good sales letter can’t remedy.” — Eugene Schwartz, top copywriter.

Imagine you could send your top sales person anyplace in the world and sell for you. They could sell 24/7 and could give the same perfect presentation every time. All benefits would be articulately presented and all objections would be addressed. And you could track the results so you could systematically get better and better.

Welcome to direct marketing, or measurable marketing.

Unlike most marketing, it has one goal: to motivate people to do what you want now because its in their best interest.

Maybe you want them to signup for a webinar or buy your product. The only way to do that is to make them feel like “if I don’t do this now I’m going to lose out on a great opportunity.”

Nothing else, besides maybe an infomercial, is as effective as a sales letter. Here’s how you write one?

Eugene famously said, “You don’t write copy. You assemble it.”

All you have to do is answer the following questions. The more details you provide, the better. You can either write it or you can dictate and transcribe it.

Then you, you’re ready to assemble a sales letter that could change your business forever.

Here’s the complete checklist. Once you write your sales letter, you’ll want to make sure it has most of the elements listed. If you don’t, refine it until they do.

Afterwards you’ll find tips on using AI and answers to common questions.

Now let’s answer some questions so you can get people to whip out their credit cards because they have to buy now!

The Ultimate Sales Letter Checklist

1) Did you answer all 10 Smart Questions about your prospect? (See below.)

2) How many of the ten were you able to use?

3) Which of the ten did you decide to emphasize?

4) Are you writing to your reader about what is most important to him/her (not you)?

5) Did you build a list of every separate Feature of your product/offer?

6) Did you translate the Features to Benefits?

7) Did you identify a Hidden Benefit to use?

8) Did you identify the disadvantages of your offer and flaws in your product?

9) Did you develop “damaging admission copy” about those flaws?

10) Did you make a list of reasons NOT to respond?

11) Did you raise and respond to the reasons NOT to respond?

12) Did you give careful thought to getting your letter delivered and/or through gatekeepers to its intended recipient?

13) Did you look at, compare, and consider different envelope faces?

14) Did you picture your piece in a stack of mail held by your recipient, sorting it over a wastebasket? Did you take care to survive the sort and command attention and pique interest immediately upon being opened?

15) Is your headline intriguing, surprising and compelling? Is it irresistible?

16) Did you craft the best possible subheads to put throughout the piece to make it scannable for impatient readers?

17) Did you make careful choices about your presentation of price?

18) Were you able to sell money at a discount?

19) Were you able to incorporate intimidation into your call to action copy?

20) Were you able to appeal to the ego of your buyer?

21) Did you develop and present a strong guarantee?

22) Overall, did you tell an interesting story?

23) Did you use an interesting story about yourself?

24) Did you write to the right length? (Not longer than need be due to poor or sloppy editing, but not shorter than necessary to deliver the best presentation?)

25) Did you use Double Readership Path?

26) Did you use Internal Repetition?

27) Did you keep the reader moving, with yes-momentum and end-of-page carryovers?

28) Did you bust up paragraphs, keep one idea per paragraph, and make the letter easily readable?

29) Were you interesting and entertaining?…Is the letter enjoyable to read?

30) Did you use five-senses word pictures?

31) Did you choose words carefully, consider options of one word versus another, and create high-impact phrases?

32) Did you make your copy personal and conversational (not institutional)?

33) Did you go back through your copy and think of possible questions or objections it might leave unanswered? …then find ways to ask them, raise the, and answer them?(Leave no unanswered questions!)

34) Did you choose and use devices to create urgency and spark immediate action?

35) Did you write at least one PS at the end of the letter for a strategic purpose?

10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions

You must thoroughly analyze, understand and connect with your customer. Answering these questions helps you build tactical empathy so you can tap the emotions and logic that will make them want to buy now.

1) What keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up their esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling?

2) What are they afraid of?

3) What are they angry about? Who are they angry at?

4) What are their top three daily frustrations?

5) What trends are occurring that affect their businesses or lives?

6) What do they secretly, ardently desire most?

7) Is there a built-in bias to the way they make decisions? (Example: Engineers are exceptionally analytical. Salespeople are often impulsive.)

8) Do they have their own language?

9) Who else is selling something similar to their product, and how?

10) Who else has tried selling them something similar, and how has that effort failed?

Frequently Asked Questions

Where did this list come from?

It came from Dan Kennedy’s classic “The Ultimate Sales Letter.” I highly recommend it.

Can I write this sales letter?

Yes, you can. Dan’s book details every you need to get you most of the way there.

If you need a professional copywriter to save you the time and effort of figuring this out on your own, you can contact me at drittenbach@gmail.com. I can help you get it done faster, so you can start making money sooner.

What if I don’t have all these answers or the time to assemble them?

You can take shortcuts when building a house, but they’ll come back to haunt you. Same goes for your sales letter. The more attention you pay to the details the better your results will be. Also, base your research on as much real data as possible.

Can I repurpose my sales letter for other marketing collateral?

Good news. This work pays dividends. Your sales letter can also be turned into a video sales letter(VSL), social media campaign or website landing page. You can probably even turn it into a podcast series.

Should I write it in a formal business tone?

Nope. Sales writing is conversational. Customers should feel like you are speaking directly to them. By the way, that’s something AI can’t currently do.

Which is more important in selling, logic or emotion?

People buy with emotion and justify with logic. If I had to choose one, emotion is more powerful than logic, especially if your reader is impulsive. If they are analytical, they are more restrained, so emphasize logic.

Can ChatGPT write sales letters?

No. Although it can speed up the research process, and help with some writing, it can’t do many things a skilled copywriter can. Here are some other things it can’t do:

· Interview customers to get deep psychological insight

· Empathize, so it can’t think from your customers point of view

· Truly connect with emotions, because it doesn’t know what they are

· Write in a conversational style, because that’s not how it was trained

· Craft an amazing headline that hooks your readers, but it can help

But you can because you’ve worked directly with your customers. You know them. You have relationships and you’re the expert. So use that to your advantage.