Takeaway Selling Revisited

Whether you are selling online, offline, or both (and you should be doing both, no matter what business you are in), you’ll undoubtedly want to get your prospect to act immediately, whether you’re attempting to generate a lead or sell a product or service. I talk a little about “takeaway selling” in my free article, 10 Ways to Write More Effective Ads, which you can get a copy at http://www.marketing-medic.com/pubs/10-ways-ads.pdf.

In it, I reveal the three basic types of takeaways that you can use to get a prospect to act immediately. I’d like to elaborate here a little bit and provide some more examples that fit into these molds.

• Give ‘em a price break for fast response, an increase for slow response. You’ll see this used a lot in the seminar business. If they respond before a certain date, they get a price break. After that date, they pay the “retail” price. And at the door it’s even higher.
  
  
• Response deadlines. Give them a free bonus if they respond by a certain date. Or a price increase if they don’t. Make sure you explain why, and it’d better be believable. I still can’t believe online marketers use the “respond by midnight tonight” to get the deal, premium, or whatever, and the date always changes each day. That’s crap, and your prospects will see right through it.
  
  A friend of mine, who is a real estate agent, sends out a direct response letter regularly. She told me that she typically got a two percent response rate on average. I suggested she include a free premium report, but only if the prospects responded by a certain date. The Result? Her response rate doubled to four percent.
  
  
• Add premiums. Often, the premium itself can be subject to the same limitations as the offer. That is, limiting the quantity, time, or offer of the premium itself. And if you advertise one premium, why not add another? If you have two, why not three? More is better, as long as they are related to the offer and are quality premiums. I received a direct response letter in the mail recently, where the company was offering their carpet cleaning service, but their premium was “How to save money cleaning your own chimney,” or something similar. Maybe they’ve done their research and found most of their target market thinks about carpet cleaning and chimney sweeping simultaneously, but I didn’t get the relevance.
  
  
• Contests. Contests (and contest deadlines) are a great way to increase response, and quickly. There are always deadlines. And here's an effective way to award your prospects and customers "second place."
  
  Last year Joe Vitale ran a promotional contest, where the prize was a giveaway of his popular Hypnotic Selling Secrets course.
  
  If you didn’t win the prize, you got an email notifying you that you had won 2nd Place! Joe then followed up with a voice broadcast informing you that you had won 2nd place, and the address online where you could go claim it. Pure genius! Bill Glazer did something similar with his menswear stores. So what happened? Most of the “2nd place winners” came into Bill’s store, or in Joe’s case went to his website, to reclaim their “prize.” But of course they wound up spending more money while they were there. In Bill’s case, this strategy brought in a 713% increase in sales over a 4-day period.
  
  If you plan to promote any contests in your marketing (and they are proven to work, if done right), don’t miss out on this technique to mint your own money.
  
  
• Clear call to action and ease of response. This is a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many businesses screw this up. Make sure you tell them to order or respond NOW, or whatever your goal of the promotion. Offer a toll-free number. A web address. A fax number. Whatever it takes. Make it easy for them to respond. If they put your piece aside for later, you’ve failed.
  
  Incidentally, including a postage-paid response device doesn’t usually outpull the same device where your prospect must affix her own postage. As always, test. But I can tell you I have tested this, and the difference is negligible, and wasn’t enough to justify the extra expense in postage for me. But your campaign may be different.
  
  
• Limited availability. If you only have X number of widgets, tell them. But tell them in a way that will get them to respond. This is basic stuff, but I saw an ad once where they mentioned at the top that they only had 500 available, but then never mentioned it afterwards. Not in the call to action. Not in the P.S. I never saw that ad again.

As you can see, there are many ways to increase urgency in your sales letter. Just remember to tell them the reason why. Don’t just say the price will be going up in three weeks, but decline to tell them why.

Here are some examples of good takeaway selling, reprinted from my article:

“Unfortunately, I can only handle so many clients. Once my plate is full, I will be unable to accept any new business. So if you’re serious about strengthening your investment strategies and creating more wealth than ever before, you should contact me ASAP.”

“Remember…you must act by [date] at midnight in order to get my 2 bonuses. These bonuses have been provided by [third-party company], and we have no control over their availability after that time.”

“We’ve obtained only 750 of these premiums from our vendor. Once they are gone, we won’t be able to get any more until next year. And even then we can’t guarantee the price will remain the same. In fact, because of the increasing demand, it’s very likely the price could double or triple by then!”

The examples above aren't bad, but they may test better by using a strong Gary Bencivenga technique. As Gary states in one of his bullets (http://www.bencivengabullets.com/bullets.asp?id=10), the word "because" is a very powerful trigger word that adds to your persuasion. Use it wisely, and use it well.