Using a letter to sell your service is much more effective than a postcard or a brochure. With a sales letter, you have space to tell your entire sales story.

"But who's gonna read a four page letter?"

When you're writing a sales letter, it's important to keep this in mind: you'd think your prospect wouldn't want to read several pages about carpet cleaning. But they will read it if you make the letter interesting and break it into readable segments.

Why Would Your Prospect Read a Four-Page Sales Letter?
Keep in mind, you're not the buyer of your service. It's your prospect who matters. Carpet cleaning is what we call "high involvement.” Your client must get highly involved with your company when you come to their home.

Their home is a very private place. Your employees may even spend time in their bedroom. For your prospect to hire you, they must prepare for the cleaning, trust the character of your techs, and then trust your technical skills. This makes hiring a cleaning service a high-involvement purchase.

Many prospects will read a volume about a product or service they are interested in. So tell your story.

This should clear up the argument of using sales letters with more than one page. You can't say even a fraction of what your prospect is wondering about in a one page letter. Some sales letters can contain dozens of pages. And the prospect may read every word if he truly is interested.

They'll easily read four pages—maybe more. So don't skimp. In fact, write everything you need and then edit the letter to remove any statement that doesn't further your sales point. Chances are you're not at risk of having your letter be too long.

Make Your Sales Letter Easy to Read
Make sure your letter is designed so the reader can quickly look at your sub-heads, bullet points and bold messages. These help break up the sales copy. That's exactly why newspapers use headlines. You're never going to read the entire paper. Instead, you glance at the headlines and read what interests you. Do the same thing with your sales letter.

Your sales letter should have a big headline at the beginning. The headline should state the biggest benefit the prospect will receive from responding to the sales letter.

The company name doesn't have to be on the front page. But if it is, don't use it as the predominant graphic. Let the headline be the largest item on the page. You want the headline seen first. Put the company name in the sidebar or toward the bottom of the first page. Or, put it further back in the letter. The prospect doesn't care about who you are until you tell them how you can help them.

Break up the copy. Use short four or five line paragraphs. Use bullet points. Use sub-headlines.

At the end of the letter, restate your offer. Tell them the benefits of responding now. Call them to action. Tell them they need to respond right now. Give an expiration date and a reason why the expiration date is in effect.

Make sure you sign your name at the end. The reader will often flip to the end to see who the letter is from.

One last tip: Most readers won't read the entire sales letter. But a large percentage will read the P.S. Make the P.S. count. Restate, once again, your most important benefit and your offer. When writing the P.S., put down the one or two sentences you would tell your prospect if you weren't allowed to tell them anything else.

Happy advertising.