Tips For Effective Sales Writing Part 1

April 29, 2009

Many real estate professionals think most (if not all) email prospects are worthless. This is far from true! One of the reasons prospects don’t respond to emails or other sales letters is they’re poorly written. Improve your sales writing ability, and you’ll improve your response rate and therefore your conversion rate. Here are some ways of improving your sales writing:

1. Don’t Use All Capital Letters

Only use capitals for all your word’s letters when you want to stress something. Don’t use them in headings. Nowadays, using a lot of capitalization in emails or on web pages is understood as shouting. Use bolding on capitalized works to distinguish them from shouted words.

2. Don’t Use Lots Of Big Words

Some real estate professionals, especially university grads, love showing off their learning and rich vocabulary in their writing by using lots of big words uncommonly used today. Remember, you’re writing sales copy, not War and Peace. It’s difficult writing clearly and concisely when your writing is weighed down with million dollar words. It looks pretentious and confuses and alienates people whose vocabulary isn’t as lofty. At the same time, there’s no need to write strictly in mono syllables. Season your writing with sophisticated words and phrasing, but don’t marinate.

3. Use Short Sentences

The same thing applies to sentences as to words: keep them short. Short sentences are quickly and easily read and digested, and sales and marketing copy should be like that. The longer your sentences, the less likely you’ll convey your points effectively.

4. 5-6 Line Paragraphs

The optimal length for your paragraphs is 5-6 lines. When some people see really long paragraphs, they’re reluctant to read them or may get lost within them.

5. Write In Descending Priority

State your most important point first, your second most important point second, and so on. A great way of writing effectively is planning your writing in point form. Write down all the points you want to make in point form. Then arrange them according to their importance. Then take each point and develop it into a single 5-6 line paragraph.

6. Sixth Grade Readability

A good benchmark for your sales and marketing copy is a sixth grader could read it. If you, your friends or relatives have a child about that age, see how well they can read it! When you’ve achieved sixth grade readability, it means you’ve used clear, direct, simple language that’s easily digestible. That’s what sales writing needs to be effective.

Find out lots more about effective sales communication in my course Excelling In The Real Estate Profession. This course has been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 to qualify for 9 credits.

Filed under: Marketing Tips

Tags: ad copy, communication, copy, email prospects, marketing copy, prospects, real estate education, real estate training, sales copy, write, writing