Robert Collier - The Robert Collier Letter Book

To a Motorist

If you have ever driven your car in a rainstorm, you know how annoying it is—dangerous, too—to have your wind shield clouded with water. How many times have you narrowly avoided accidents under these conditions? With the—Cleaner attached to your car, all you need to do is turn a button in front of you, and instantly every drop of water in your field of vision is swept from your wind shield. The glass is left clear and clean.

To a Doctor

What a clutter of books a doctor can get around him, and what a fearful outlay of money they will come to represent if he doesn’t use great discrimination in their purchase. I don’t suppose there is any class of people—and I have customers among every class you can think of—who appreciate more than my medical friends the marvelous savings I am able to make them on all standard sets, reference books, etc.

To a Housewife

After you have your breakfast dishes washed, your floors swept, and your beds made up, I should like to have a moment of your time. You are an excellent judge of what is good to eat, and know when you are getting what you should from your grocer to be saving and yet to set your table with healthful and dainty dishes for your family...

To Any Man

Are you like Mr. Fuller in that you dislike to shave with cold or lukewarm water?

Mr. Fuller always grumbled when the water was cold. Usually it was cold. You know how the ordinary hot water system works early in the morning.

But the Fullers found a way out of their troubles. Now—nowadays, no matter how early they may arise, there’s always steaming hot water the instant a faucet is turned.

To Insurance Agents

Did you ever, as a kid, sneak up alongside an old mill pond and heave what Penrod might call a "good old rock" far out into the middle of its placid surface—just for the fun of seeing all the mud turtles on all their sunny legs drop off into the water with one loud, individual PLUNK?

If the humble mud turtle formed no part of the backyard fauna of your youth, I reckon there was something mighty similar to engage your budding talents. Just as you find now, in your grown-up days, that the pursuit of your business aims often involve the same emotions that lent interest to your activities in the eyes of your early neighbors. For example: We want to point out to you a few of the prospects that are basking along the banks of the . . .

Bait—all of them. Find the thing your prospect is interested in and make it your point of contact, rather than rush in and try to tell him something about your proposition, your goods, your interests.

Table of Contents

To go back to the very beginning, what is the first thing to do in writing any business letter?

Before you put pen to paper, before you ring for your stenographer, decide in your own mind what effect you want to produce on your reader—what feeling you must arouse in him.

If you want your readers to say, as the crowds did of Demosthenes' famous rival: "What a clever speaker!"—then it is quite all right to start with catch-phrases and the like. But if you want to emulate Demosthenes, whose hearers forgot all about him in their interest in his message, then your whole effort must be centered on arousing the feeling in them: ''Let's go!”

For back of every successful letter, as back of every sale, is a created feeling that impels the reader to act as you want him. It is the whole purpose of every business letter, whether it be sales, collection, adjustment or complaint, to make your reader want to do the thing you are urging upon him.

How are you to arouse that feeling in him? How would you have to feel yourself before you would place such an order as you have in mind, before you would grant such an extension, before you would send a payment to this man in preference to all others, at a time when it was an effort to send a dollar to anyone?

What would you want first to know? What about the proposition would interest you most? What would you feel you had to gain by accepting? What would you lose by refusing?

They say the Parisians have a formula for love letters: "Begin without knowing what you are going to say, and end without knowing what you have said." That may be good medicine for love letters, but it was never meant for business. Though, to do the Frenchmen justice, such of their letters as appear in print indicate that while they may not know what they are going to say, they have a pretty clear idea of the emotion they want to arouse in their reader, and they leave no stone unturned in the doing of it.

And after all, isn’t that the whole purpose of a letter? Books have been written about the importance of attention, and interest, and argument, and clinchers, but aren’t these mere details? When you come down to it, isn’t the prime requisite arousing the feeling in your reader that he must have the thing you are offering, or that he can not rest until he has done the thing you are urging him to?

Consider the two following letters, for instance. The first follows all the rules. It wins attention, it creates interest, it describes what it has to offer, it has argument, conviction, clincher, yet it was only moderately successful, whereas the second letter literally pulled its head off. Why the difference?

Because the first letter was aimed only at the intellect, whereas the second, while it tried to convince the intellect, aimed its real appeal at the emotions! And when it is action you want, go after the emotions every time!

The Finally Revised, Illustrated

Edition of WELLS’ HISTORY in 4 vols.

At 1/4 less than the Original Price of Two!

DEAR READER:

At last H. G. Wells’ famous "Outline of History" has been put into its finally revised form, illustrated with 100 famous historical paintings, and brought out in four regular, library-size books. A million copies of the Outline were sold in the bulky one and two volume editions. A million more people wanted it, but they waited for a lighter, more easily handled volume. Here it is—a brand new edition, freshly revised, of four standard library-size books, for 25% less than the price of the original two-volume set.

And that isn’t all.

For a long time Mr. Wells felt that parts of his history needed re-writing— that other parts should be clarified, and the whole thoroughly revised. This was his chance. Starting from the very beginning, he changed every single page of the text, re-wrote whole chapters, added page after page of additional matter. This is his final revision. In discussing this edition with a friend while in America, Mr. Wells said that the revisions would make the original English edition look like a Stone Age effort.

There are a hundred new illustrations, reproductions from historical paintings from the great art galleries of the world. Not only New York, but the Art Stores and Galleries of London and Paris were searched through for these. It is the finest edition of the "Outline of History" that has ever been brought out. Yet you may have it—if you mail the enclosed card at once—at an amazingly low price.

One-Fourth Off!

Think of it! Finally revised, printed from brand new, clear, readable plates, with a hundred new pictures besides those that were in the discarded editions, and bound up into 4 beautiful, library-size volumes—all for 25% less than the original two-volume set would cost you even now in any book store!

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