60-Minute Naked Truth Salesletter Formula

One of the most pop­u­lar threads on my now defunct dis­cus­sion forum for copy­writ­ers was one started by my friend Dean Jack­son.

If you don’t know Dean Jack­son, he is a Toron­ton­ian, a real estate mogul, an infor­ma­tion mar­ket­ing mil­lion­aire (author of many pro­grams, includ­ing the highly suc­cess­ful “Stop Your Divorce!”), and a darn-​​fine copywriter.

This post was extremely pop­u­lar for a num­ber of reasons.

In it, Dean shared his quick-​​and-​​dirty for­mula for writ­ing saleslet­ters really fast. Of course, I’m a big fan of Robert Plank’s Speed Copy Secrets. But this for­mula is a great short­cut if you want to write a bare­bones saleslet­ter in less than an hour.

Above all, the idea behind this for­mula is to get you to start writ­ing. Too many mar­keters and copy­writ­ers get stuck at the begin­ning, such as at the head­line, and they fail to get any trac­tion. They often blame it on “writer’s block.”

Accord­ing to Dean, this for­mula has helped him write sev­eral million-​​dollar saleslet­ters for him­self and oth­ers. With his gra­cious per­mis­sion, I’m reprint­ing it here on this blog, along with some of my own edi­to­r­ial com­ments and tips…

Please note, this is not going to result in an exten­sive or exhaus­tive saleslet­ter. But it will pro­vide you with a skele­tal out­line you can either use as is, or eas­ily expand from.

Remem­ber, most peo­ple find that the hard­est thing to do is to get started writ­ing. It’s easy to get caught up in try­ing to fig­ure out the best hook or headline.

That’s why its power lies in its sim­plic­ity. This for­mula is an easy, kick-​​into-​​gear way to get a really quick head­start. As Dean noted, “I’d rather be golf­ing than sweat­ing out a sales let­ter, so I’m very inter­ested in achiev­ing quick results.”

It all starts with decid­ing exactly what you want some­one to do. Once you’ve deter­mined that, then it’s to sit down for 60 min­utes or so to write an unedited, rough-​​draft, hand­writ­ten let­ter bar­ing the “naked truth” of what you really want.

With­out any dis­trac­tions. With­out going into any tan­gents. And with­out stopping.

Dean sug­gests tak­ing a pen and a legal pad, and start writ­ing a stream of con­scious­ness, by hand, to one indi­vid­ual per­son you imag­ine as your ideal prospect.

I per­son­ally don’t mind using my com­puter, but I believe Dean sug­gests doing it by hand because it’s harder to edit your­self when doing so. Edit­ing as you write is one of the biggest crutches for copy­writ­ers that impedes their writing.

Also, get­ting to know your per­fect prospect is crucial.

In our course, Mar­ket­ing ESP, we share with you the exact process we go through to find mar­kets and cre­ate “buyer per­sonas” using spy­ing tech­niques, side­ways strate­gies, and unique and uncon­ven­tional key­word research methods.

In it, we show you how to cre­ate a per­fect prospect pro­file, a “buyer per­sona.” It’s a per­fect com­ple­ment to Dean’s tech­nique as it will allow you to develop a clear under­stand­ing of who your prospect is, what do they want, and how do they want it.

Know­ing this before­hand will allow you to sit down and write a saleslet­ter faster than you’ve ever dreamed pos­si­ble. The rea­son is, the infor­ma­tion you uncover dur­ing that research will pro­vide you with a ton of infor­ma­tion you can use in your writing.

Nev­er­the­less, the key is to write the let­ter as if they are the only per­son who is going to receive the let­ter. You write to that per­son and that per­son only. Per­son­ally, one on one.

At this point, you shouldn’t con­cern your­self about the gram­mar, the look, or the tech­niques of copy­writ­ing. As copy­writer Peter Stone says, “Write first, edit later.”

No one is actu­ally going to see the let­ter at this point, any­way. You can edit it your­self after­ward, or have some­one else or hire some­one else to edit it for you.

The key is to do it and do it as quickly as pos­si­ble. Get your­self a timer, if you can. Limit your­self to 60 min­utes. That way, you won’t be tempted to stop along the way to edit your­self. Don’t do it. Keep writ­ing, and write like there’s no tomorrow.

You must get your­self to sit down with the thought of hav­ing to get it all done in less than one hour. Write down just the essen­tials at this point. Keep it sim­ple, keep your per­fect cus­tomer in mind at all times, and keep it flowing.

Now, here’s the 10-​​part let­ter formula.

Start with “Dear Dean,” which can be the name you give your per­fect prospect. Remem­ber, you can change it later. Don’t worry about the head­line at this point. Next…

1. Start with the pur­pose of your letter.

“I’m writ­ing to you because I want you to…” Insert your naked-​​truth rea­son you’re writ­ing, as if you were mak­ing your request known to a lamp Genie who could grant your wish, like, “Take out your credit card and pay me $39 for my new book called…”

2. Rea­sons you are writ­ing to this spe­cific person.

“The rea­son I’m writ­ing to you specif­i­cally is because I think you want…” And then list the rea­sons in bul­let form, such as rea­son #1, rea­son #2, rea­son #3, and so on.

3. List the fea­tures and ben­e­fits of your prod­uct or offer.

“Here is a list of what you get when you [buy my book]…” Again, use bul­lets. First list the fea­ture fol­lowed by the ben­e­fit after “which means,” such as “You get [fea­ture], which means [ben­e­fit].” Write as many as you can drum up at this point.

4. Top 10 ques­tions and/​or objections.

You can say, “If I were to guess the top 10 ques­tions or objec­tions you will have about buy­ing my prod­uct today, they would be these…” You then fol­low that by another bul­leted list of the top 10 most asked ques­tions or most press­ing concerns.

5. Answers to those ques­tions or objections.

“So here’s how I would clear those up for you…” Same idea as point #4. List, in bul­let form, the answers to each and every ques­tion or con­cern you’ve uncovered.

6. Explain the guar­an­tee or how you are remov­ing the risks.

“I want you to be com­pletely with­out risk, so here’s my guar­an­tee…” Then explain how your guar­an­tee works, how it reduces or removes the risk from the pur­chase in their minds, and how to take advan­tage of it if they need to.

7. The most impor­tant part: the call to action.

“It’s really easy to get started. You just…” (what­ever it is they must do, such as “click this but­ton,” “fill in this form,” “call this phone num­ber,” “return this coupon,” etc). Pro­vide the exact, step-​​by-​​step instruc­tions on how they can take action.

8. The result of their tak­ing action.

“Once you decide to get started here’s what’s going to hap­pen…” Describe what’s going to hap­pen once they go ahead. Edu­cate them on how they will get their prod­uct, and how they will con­sume it. Tell them how to make the best use of their new purchase.

9. Add an ele­ment of scarcity or a sense of urgency.

“You need to do this right now because…” Tell them why they need to take action today. Is there a limit or a dead­line? What will be the con­se­quences if they don’t take action? What are the ulti­mate costs of not going ahead today?

10. Finally, tes­ti­mo­ni­als from sat­is­fied customers.

“Here’s a list of peo­ple who have already [done this] and exactly what hap­pened for them…” Add tes­ti­mo­ni­als or case stud­ies from other cus­tomers. Of course, I don’t need to remind you that they must be real and gen­uine.

There you have it.

When you’re done with this exer­cise in hope­fully one hour or less, it’s easy to start tak­ing the bare­bone copy ele­ments from it and dress­ing them up to take out in public.

You can add more, rearrange the ele­ments, expand points, add proper tran­si­tions between each sec­tion, make it flow neatly, tighten it all up, and so on.

Once you’ve done this naked-​​truth, skele­tal saleslet­ter, head­line ideas will nat­u­rally jump out at you. You will have some ground­work from which to come up with sev­eral head­lines and pos­si­ble hooks that will appeal to your per­fect customer.

Remem­ber, the headline’s job is only one thing: to get your prospect to read your let­ter. Once you’ve accom­plished that, the rest should be smooth sailing.

Tell me (or Dean Jack­son) what you think! We would love to get your feedback.

About the Author

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