Web Vintage Literature

Chapter 6. How to Hold Interest Explanation

You have attracted attention: you have won interest: now to explain your proposition. This, says that amateur writer of sales letters, is a cinch. All one has to do is to tell about the goods. That's all, tell about the goods.

This sounds easy, does it not? One has but to produce a word-picture of a definite object or describe tersely a service, which you offer. Yet if there is a gift more rare than that of translating a concrete article into words, it is the ability to see that article in the minds eye. Both are necessary when one begins to tell about the goods. Holman, in his Ginger Talks to Salesmen, says it takes a long time to tell something you don't know, and similarly, it takes a good many words to picture in another's mind something which you see only vaguely in your own.

The theory of successful letter-writing may be learned easily and the tricks of the trade assimilated at a glance, but the ability to form a mental picture and make others see it vividly by means of words is something which comes with patient labor. And it is something, which cannot be taught it must be learned. Wrap your mind about the thing you have to sell. Analyze it. study it, finger it over with the tentacles of the brain. Concentrate upon it so long and with such singleness that the product and all its parts will swim plainly into view before your closed eyes.

Watch a man telling a story. He visualized each point and situation for his listener. You can profit by his art. Eliminate non-essentials or the points in your product, which are common to all similar goods. Center upon the details of superiority. Then draw your word picture in a few simple, strong, definite phrases.

Easy? The best minds in literature have staggered before that problem. It is what raises sales-letter writing and advertising to the plane of a fine art. It is the reason men of true literary genius are to be found today in the ranks of the business correspondents.

In telling about the goods, one must speak to one of two classes people who know something about this class of product or people to whom the whole proposition is new and strange. In the one case, the writer aims to bring out only the points of superiority in his product: in the other, the whole proposition must be made plain.

Points of superiority in a staple goods are frequently a matter of opinion. The proprietor for whom you write must be given credit for a certain amount of parental bias. Like the cleverness and amiability of his babies, the superiority of his product may consist merely in a more or less justifiable pride in his own ability as a producer.

It is best to look at the proposition from the users standpoint always and to present it in its final relation to that user. To describe the details of manufacture and the high grade, expensive materials used in a fountain-pen is the makers ides: the user wants to know that this pen never leaks, is easily and quickly refilled, that it does not clog and requires no special sort of writing fluid.

Nor is it enough that these vital facts be stated they must be put in such phrases as will attract, humor and convince the reader. A real estate promoter shows us how this may be done:

Fresh Spring Water, so pure and delicious that it is bottled and sold, is piped through all the streets. Just think of that, as compared with having to buy your table water, or to drink Croton water unsatisfactorily filtered!

A manufacturer of bathroom equipment is equally successful when he says:

Porcelain Enameled Ware is a perfect unity of iron and porcelain enamel the strongest and most durable combination ever produced in a sanitary fixture, having the indestructible strength of iron with the showy elegance of fine china. Their extraordinary wearing quality is only one of the reasons why these beautiful fixtures afford more years of satisfactory service per dollar of cost than any other variety of plumbing equipment in the world.

In some cases the points of superiority consist in high quality of raw material, exceptional grade of labor or peculiar process of manufacture. The common expressions used to qualify these points carry no conviction. Best on earth, above competition, secret process of manufacture, such stereotyped phrases were abandoned by intelligent writers when P.T. Barnum struck Broadway fifty years ago.

If Robinson Crusoe had been written in the best on earth style of generalities, it would never have reached print. The earmark of a true tale or a sincere description is an unconscious emphasis on little specific points that a man can scarcely imagine, but is sure to notice as he actually lives the part or touches the goods. T AKE, for instance, so simple a tool as a tap. All one can say about it, apparently, is that it is well made, of the best steel and carefully tempered. Everybody who ever wrote a letter on these tools said the same thing in the same words, until a New England manufacturer tried his hand. That letter was a masterpiece. In describing the goods he said: You could forge a first class razor from on of our taps and the razor would cut smooth and clean for the same reason that the tap doest would have the right stuff in it.

Let that one sink in.

He does not say that his tap is made from razor steel (which would be commonplace), but that you could make a razor from one of his taps (which is distinctive). And then instead of a lot of hackneyed phrases designed to convince the reader that this steel is the best on earth, he states succinctly that his tap has the right stuff in it.

He simply takes a fresh view point has the courage to use unexpected words.

The same principle applies everywhere. Avoid extravagance, vague claims, generalities, and superlatives. Exaggerations gain nothing. The world today knows that for every high-grade product there are a dozen just as good. It may be true that yours is the best on earth, but it will take either a mighty good presentation of that fact or a detailed explanation of at least one point of superiority to make a stranger believe it.

Sometimes whole paragraphs of description may be crystallized into a single suggestion of comparison. The Bell refrigerator, says one letter writer, is as finely finished as the most expensive piano.

A furniture maker gives me a distinct impression of the quality of his goods when he says: There is as much difference between the oak used in ordinary furniture and the selected quarter sawed white oak we use in ours as there is between laundry soap and a cake of scented Pears. And still another puts a wealth of suggestion into his letter by saying: Nothing will effectually take the place of the good old cedar chest, with its clean, sweet, pungent aroma so dear to the heart of the old fashioned housewife.

To explain a new proposition to one, who knows nothing of it, one must naturally begin with general statements; also one must begin with something with which the reader is familiar. A piece of art nouveau jewelry, for example, is almost impossible of definite word-picturing, yet reference to the modern French school of design and allusions to a popular Parisian jeweler would call up in the readers mind a picture which would satisfy.

The object here is to stimulate the imagination rather than attempt to portray an actuality. A piece of silk might be said to resemble in tone the colorings of a rare old Japanese print, which is wholly ambiguous but leads the mind back to a vaguely exquisite memory. The result of such suggestion is almost as definite as if we show the article, while a series of superlative adjectives such as most harmonious coloring, exquisite design and charming ensemble leave no other impression than one of admiration for the writers command of words.

In any explanation, specific or general, it should be the writers idea to so describe his goods that the reader will both understand and desire them. It is not enough to tell what you have for sale, but you must tell it in a sales-making manner. A clever haberdasher never shows a scarf in the box. He takes it out and with a deft twist forms a four-in-hand over his finger and the customer not only sees the scarf its color, weave and the play of light over the silken surface but he sees it in its relation to himself, as it will look when worn.

This should be the idea of the sales-letter writer as well as the salesman show the gods in their final relation to the customer. A salt manufacturer carries out this idea in this manner: You know how ordinary table salt refuses to sift in damp weather and when dry, cakes in the salt sellers like adamant. Our salt is always dry and flaky and it flows freely on the dampest day.

And a maker of underwear strikes home when he says: Crown underwear lets your body breathe. A continuous current of fresh air passes through the holes in the fabric, cooling, cleaning and stimulating the pores of the skin. Such description wins interest and even arouses desire because the reader feels its relation to himself.

But under no circumstances, in the efforts to make your explanation of human interest, let it make an indefinite impression. Better picture your product with the exactness with which the draftsman draws a new machine, even though it does look dry and mechanical, than convey any but the actual facts, and convey them plainly. The most successful mediums today, the big mail order houses describe their products with the most exact and apparently prosaic details.

But to give the width and length of a rug, the exact order of colors, the length of the fringe these facts give an impression of realness and also visualize the article to the customer. Not only visualize it, but also by giving the dimensions and appearance, visualize it in the place where the buyer would like to see it, on the floor in a certain spot in the home where it will fit.

Vitalize the Facts Let your correspondent know that a personal interest attaches to him a real personal interest that is not measured wholly by his order and his dollar.

Talk to him along the purple ribbon as one man would talk to another with point, tact and brevity; with keen business sense and clever understanding of his needs.

In return you will win that close, personal associations and active support which builds business. --George H. Barbour