When you first read a professionally written sales letter, you can find yourself gripped by the words, held in awe by the language, and, finally, reaching for your wallet so that you can pay for your future purchase. You might also find yourself surprised: how can such a letter exert so much power in only a single page, with brilliant illustrations, and only a few paragraphs of text?
The answer is not so much in skillfully writing words. To write a sales letter, you need people skills: you need to know what touches people, what makes them happy, what clicks with them, what makes them excited, and what pushes them to finally spend their hard-earned money to buy something. Your job as a sales letter writer is to sell not by writing well, but by striking a balance: you have to be exciting without being sensational, and you need to be as truthful about your product as possible, playing on its strengths and using these strengths to fuel your letter.
Many sales letter writers make the mistake of thinking that they must sell something, and using this mentality to fuel the task of writing a sales letter. The job, however, can be more complicated than that. Your starting...