What You Can Learn From the Best Sales Writers

What You Can Learn From the Best Sales Writers:from (title unknown) by Jon Birdsong

Any great sales rep knows how to communicate effectively. If you can write efficiently and deliver your point clearly, sales becomes more fun and profitable.

Today, we’re looking back at correspondences that focus on pushing some sort of deal forward.  Tact, humor, and persuasion have always been tools to fulfill the ambitions of industrious men and women. Before each letter, we’ll explain the context and let you take what you will from each.

This post is a fun one. Enjoy:

William Randolph Hearst to Whitelaw Reid
“How much will you take for the Tribune”

William Randolph Hearst’s bid to buy the New York Tribune was brief in the following exchange.
To:
Whitelaw Reid, Owner
New York Tribune
154 Nassau Street
New York NY
How much will you take for the Tribune?
W. R. Hearst

William Randolph Hearst

To:
William Randolph Hearst
New York Journal
Park Row
New York NY
Three cents on weekdays, five cents on Sundays.
Reid.
—-

SalesLoft’s Take: in negotiation, humor is a very powerful tool. Reid was able to make a humorous response in the initial negotiations of a deal. He maintained a good relationships while saying “no.”

David Ogilvy to Ogilvy & Mather
“You cannot bore people into buying your product.”

David Ogilvy

British advertising man David Ogilvy wrote the following letter to department heads of his agency Ogilvy & Mather, where he served at that time as creative head. In the letter, Ogilvy contends that the best kinds of advertisement not only increased sales, but also embraced “big ideas.”
July 18, 1977
Confusion?
I am told that some of you are confused by what you perceive as a change in my creative philosophy.
For many years you heard me inveigh against “entertainment” in TV commercials and “cleverness” in print advertising. When the advertising world went on a “creative” binge in the late 1960′s, I denounced award winners and lunatics. Then I started the David Ogilvy Award – for the campaign which produced the biggest increase in sales.
You got the word.
Then, two years ago, you began to receive memos from me, complaining that too much of our output was stodgy and dull. Sometimes I circulated commercials and advertisements which I admired, but which appeared to violate my own principles.
Have I gone mad?
My original Magic Lantern started with the assertion that Position and Promise were more than half the battle. You accepted that, and proceeded accordingly.
But another slide in my dear old Lantern states that “unless your advertising contains a Big Idea it will pass like a ship in the night.” Very few of you seem to have paid attention to that.
Three years ago I woke up to the fact that the majority of our campaigns, while impeccable as to positioning and promise, contained no big ideas. They were too dull to penetrate the filter which consumers erect to protect themselves against the daily deluge of advertising. Too dull to be remembered. Too dull to build a brand image. Too dull to sell. (“You cannot bore people into buying your product.”)
In short, we were still sound, but we were no longer brilliant. Neither soundness nor brilliance is any good by itself, each requires the other…
So the time had come to give the pendulum a push in the other direction. If that push has puzzled you, caught you on the wrong foot and confused you, I can only quote Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of the little minds….Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannonballs, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.”
I want all our offices to create campaigns which are second to none in positioning, promise — and brilliant ideas…
D.O.
—-

SalesLoft’s Take: In the never ending quest to be brilliant and remain relevant, leaders must constantly seek ways to innovate. One of them is through constant reflection and analysis. David Ogilvy knew his firm needed to innovate, so he confidently – with a humble tone –  wrote the heads of his agencies on his core beliefs in selling. Big ideas sell; big ideas with passion behind them sell even more. In your next email to a client, get excited, share the grander vision and see what they say.

Jacob H. Schiff, on the Buyer of The New York Times
“The very man who might be able to resurrect the paper.”

In 1896, the struggling New York Times sought an infusion of cash and energy to restore the newspaper’s prominence. Adolph S. Ochs, the energetic publisher of the Chattanooga Times, emerged as a prospective buyer. Uncertain about whether to accept an offer from the rustic businessman from Tennessee, shareholders balked. Och’s persuasiveness and letters of support, such as this one from financier Jacob H. Schiff, however, convinced Charles R. Flint — who held a controlling interest in the stock of the newspaper– to sell. Ochs and his descendants have controlled the newspaper ever since.
New York April 6th 1896
Dear Mr. Flint:
I have your letter of the 4th inst., enclosing receipt for my stock in the New York Times.
Mr. Trask has inquired of me as to Mr. Adolph S. Ochs, of the Chattanooga Times, and I have taken special pains to make careful inquiries as to the latter’s standing and capabilities for the position which he seeks in connection with the New York Times. From what I learn I am strongly impressed that he is a man of exceptional energy, experience and talent in the journalistic line, and, so far as I can judge from the information I have about Mr. Ochs, he appears to be the very man who might be able to resurrect the paper.
I hope your Committee will be able to make arrangements with Mr. Ochs mutually satisfactory, and I am,
Yours Truly,
Jacob H. Schiff
—-

SalesLoft’s Take: This letter is a little formal, but one theme remains constant in business: people talk. Reputation is everything and persuasion in writing is done. This letter would look ridiculous in today’s style of writing but one’s reputation and character are the backbone of a sale.

Great salesmen are all great communicators. Find a way to communicate well, either verbally or through writing and watch your sales increase.