Robert Collier - The Robert Collier Letter Book

Only 46 sets left! The success of our special offer surpassed all expectations. It will be necessary to issue another edition at once. The style of binding will be changed, but otherwise the two editions will be the same. As we don’t want to carry two styles on hand, we are willing to let you have one of the remaining 46 sets at the old price, although the increased cost of paper, printing and binding has forced us to raise the price of the new sets more than 50%.

Make your reader feel that this is his last chance—keep your penalty dangling before his mind’s eye, the money-saving lost, the opportunity missed. Put into your close the fear of consequences.

Finally, tell him what to do. Don’t leave it to him to decide. We are all mentally lazy, you know, so dictate his action for him—get your suggester to working on him. If he is to do certain things, describe them. Tell him to put his name on the enclosed card, stamp and mail, or pin his check or dollar bill to this letter and return in the enclosed envelope. Here is the way others have done it successfully:

"Now, what am I to do?" you ask. Simply send your order to me personally. Just say—" Make my suit as you agreed in your letter."

If you wish other samples or further information, we shall be more than glad to furnish them. But send your order first. Remember, we have material on hand sufficient for only 95 suits. While they last, you can get a made-to-measure, tailored-to-fit suit of our regular $75 quality, for only $37.50. But to do so, you have to be prompt.

Don't send me any money after the 1st. If you do, it will surely be returned, unless you are willing to pay me the new price of $50 a share instead of $40.

I have some regard for the men who made inquiries when our project was young before it fairly got under way. That is why I am including you in this offer because you were one of our original inquirers. Remember, no acceptance of your old price after the 1st. The stock is even now worth $50.

Such wonderful opportunities will of course be snapped up quickly. Our doors will open at 9 o'clock Monday morning, and to have the widest range of selection, you should not put off your visit a moment later than absolutely necessary.

It was necessary to place this large order to secure the sets at the lowest possible figure. Knowing that the number would exceed our weekly sales, we decided to offer these extra sets to some of the ambitious young men who have been writing us.

If you will fill out the enclosed scholarship blank and mail it right away, we will send you one of these handsome sets FREE, express prepaid. But this offer must be accepted before the 30th of this month. At the rate Scholarship Blanks are now coming in, it is more than likely that the available sets will all be gone by the 30th. It is necessary therefore that you send your application at once.

The demand has been large and there are only a few copies left but one of them will be yours when you have O.K.'d and mailed the enclosed card.

But you must act now. There are only 2700 copies of this book still on hand and no more can be printed at less than double the price. So pin your money to this letter and mail it today.

Remember, he who hesitates nowadays never gets a flash at fortune. The men who made millions in Texas oil lands are the men who dared, who went ahead unafraid, who plunged in on their own judgment—and didn't wait.

The saying that everything comes to him who waits may have been true a hundred years ago, when people had plenty of time to wait for the good things of life. But today the only one that things come to is the man who goes after them. The enclosed blank is your reservation for some of the good things of life. Will you mail it now—TODAY?

It has been proved that seven times out of ten your average business man will read the opening paragraph of an ordinary letter that is palpably not from a customer, take a cursory glance at the middle, and then jump to the last paragraph to see what it is all about, and how much it costs. So it is essential that you put a hook into that last paragraph.

Remember, too, that a successful close has two parts. The first is the persuasion and inducement. It shows your reader the gain that is his by ordering, the chances of loss he takes by delay. It emphasizes the guarantee and minimizes the cost.

When your reader gets that far, he is almost ready to act, but your close lacks a hook. What must he do to get all these things? Tell him!

Make it so plain and easy he will not have a reason for not ordering. If you do not, you have not finished your letter, and lacking the barb of that hook, your reader is likely to lapse from his "almost ready" attitude back into indifference.

Table of Contents

To sum it up, every good letter contains these six essential elements:

1. The opening, which gets the reader’s attention by fitting in with his train of thought and establishes a point of contact with his interests, thus exciting his curiosity and prompting him to read further.

2. The description or explanation, which pictures your proposition to the reader by first outlining its important features, then filling in the necessary details.

3. The motive or reason why, which creates a longing in the reader’s mind for what you are selling, or impels him to do as you want him to, by describing— not your proposition but what it will do for him—the comfort, the pleasure, the profit he will derive from it.

4. The proof or guarantee, which offers to the reader proof of the truth of your statements, or establishes confidence by a money-back-if-not-satisfied guarantee.

5. The snapper or penalty, which gets immediate action by holding over your reader’s head the loss in money or prestige or opportunity that will be his if he does not act at once.

6. The close, which tells the reader just what to do and how to do it, and makes it easy for him to act at once.

These rules, of course, are for the man or woman who is studying the art of writing resultful letters. After a time, they come to be a sort of second nature, so that you weigh each of these features without being conscious that you are doing so. You may even mix them all up into one grand goulash, so that to the beginner they will seem to be not there at all, but they or their close relatives are in every successful letter.

Rules, however, are merely the start. They are the mechanics of a letter. Real letter-writing only starts there. It is getting the feel of your message that counts. I remember the first sales letter I ever wrote. I knew as little about the writing of letters as any one who ever took his typewriter in hand to tackle the job. But I was full of an idea, and it came out all over that letter. And that is what counts.

I was doing mining engineering at the time, in a little town called Powellton, in West Virginia. We had an unusually good vein of gas coal, which was called the Powellton Seam; and the 200 old style, beehive ovens, with which we turned out Powellton Coke.

Like all the other mines in the district, we depended for business upon brokers in the big towns. They would contract with the large users for so many carloads of coal or coke, of a certain general grade, and then place their orders with whichever mines made them the lowest price, allowing them the greatest margin. The result was that all the mines were in much the same boat, whether their coal happened to be better or worse. When times were good they bid against each other for laborers, and between the lack of them and the lack of cars they were able to run the mines only three or four days a week. When times were bad they underbid each other for the little business available, and managed to work only one or two days a week.