Longtime inventor, Inventors Digest columnist responds to readers’ requests about key marketing tool
The details of sell sheet preparation are fanatical, because it is based on the science of psychology and is not to be messed with.
BY JACK LANDER
The invention endgame is selling.
You must have a sell sheet to license your invention. Or, if you intend to produce rather than licensing, you’ll have to convince skeptical catalogers, internet sellers and distributors they can make a profit marketing your product.
Even if you plan to market directly to customers, you need all the elements of a sell sheet, in ad format, to convince potential customers to notice and buy your product.
How do I make a sell sheet? That’s very high on the list of questions I’m asked by inventors.
4 main guidelines
Let’s get into the fanatical details of sell sheet preparation.
Why fanatical? Because the sell sheet is based on the science of psychology and is not to be messed with. Sell sheet rules apply to the following objectives:
- We must overcome readers’ natural impatience.
- We must engage their interest and compel them to read on.
- We must keep them reading and believing.
- We must make it super easy to respond.
Assume your reader is impatient, with zero tolerance for any words or graphics that don’t coincide with the objectives of his or her business.
Usually a person’s business—and especially a corporation’s—is to make a profit. So, never start a sell sheet with anything but a promise that your intent is to help your reader make more profit.
This doesn’t mean “in-your-face” boasting to make the corporation millions of dollars. The promised profit will be indirect and realistic.
Address the customer
For example, unlike your cover letter, your sell sheet should be directed to your product’s customer, not to its corporate recipient. You’ve already stated in your cover letter something like, “The purpose of my letter is to tell you about a new product that will prove profitable for your company.”
So, if your sell sheet is for a novel sponge that you’ve invented, the tagline should talk to your customer with something like: “Wonder-Sponge™ will wash your car in five minutes and save gallons of water.”
That tagline is obviously intended for the potential buyer of Wonder-Sponge. Your reader’s interest is this: Can my company market this product profitably? And if you can convince your reader that Wonder-Sponge has honest benefits that will attract buyers, the reader automatically reasons that potential sales mean potential profits.
Once you have readers’ early interest, convince them to read more by listing secondary benefits in brief, bulleted sentences or even phrases. The rules of perfect English are less important than convincing your reader of the eventual customer’s benefits gained from your product.
Following the bulleted benefits should be the disclosure of details that reinforce their claims. If you’ve caught the reader’s interest with your brief, bulleted claims, expanding them with details helps build believability. Keep this section short—never more than 100 words, preferably closer to 50 or so.
After the words that reinforce your claims, list three or four testimonials from users. The users can be people to whom you have given a free prototype if your product is not yet ready for sale.
So, how do we put all of this together in the proper arrangement so that it is effective?
The revel is in the details
The format sheet provides the best arrangement.
First is the tagline (headline). It consists of a few words that tell what the product is, followed by the product’s main benefit. The tagline runs across the width of the paper.
Next, below the tagline, is the photo. The photo and tagline work together to satisfy the first objective, to attract attention.
The “photo” may be a camera shot or a computer-generated graphic. I strongly urge you to use the latter.
Even though you’ve taken a lot of impressive photos of your dog with your iPhone, taking a great commercial shot is a matter of proper lighting and non-distracting background. Most homemade camera shots of a prototype get a grade of “C” at best in my opinion.
A computer -generated photo will have near perfect lighting and a non-distracting background. But the great advantage to this kind of illustration is that you can make corrections and changes easily and inexpensively. To change a professional camera shot means setting up again and hoping you get what you visualized.
The photo is placed on the left side of the sheet because we read from left to right, and we want the placement to correspond to the reading habit of the reader. To view a few computer-generated photos, see suburbanartworks.com.
Be sure your choice of a graphics service does this work regularly and is a true professional. Ask to see examples.
Your tagline should identify the product and promise its main benefit, as I did for the fictitious Wonder-Sponge. The tagline is placed above the photo for emphasis and for sufficient space to fit it all on one line.
Try to hold the tagline to a maximum of 12 words if possible. More than that may require two lines and smaller font size, and lack the elegance of the single line.
To the right of the photo, list the benefits that are subordinate to the benefit promised in the tagline. These benefits should have bullets, not numerals. Try for at least three. And remember that each benefit is for the eventual customer, not the corporate reader.
You may find that one or more of your bulleted benefits cannot be explained well enough due to its brevity. So, use the space below the photo and benefits for a paragraph or two that provides a clear explanation.
Below the explanatory paragraphs, list your user testimonials. Ideally, these are from people who bought your product.
It’s a good idea to produce a short run of your product if you can afford it, and sell it. Then, ask your customers for their opinion of its performance. If selling is not practical, produce a few prototypes, enlist friends and friends of friends, and ask for opinions.
Testimonials must be believable in order to serve their purpose, so don’t exaggerate your claims. (Well, OK—you can exaggerate a little. Everybody does it.)
Lastly, provide your contact information. Company name, address, and phone number are important. I find it hard to trust any company that won’t give me its snail-mail address and phone number.
Include your email address of course, and your URL for your website if you have one.
Folding, fancy fonts forbidden
Whenever you hand out a sell sheet to a company representative, it’s a good idea to give him or her at least three so it can be passed on to others in the company with an interest in potential new products.
If you mail your cover letter and sell sheets, use a 9-by-12 envelope and mail them flat. This is another of my fanatical rules.
Folded mail is a minor annoyance, especially if you want your recipient to get immediately into the material and not have to spend premium time straightening it to make it readable. It’s a small courtesy but a welcome one.
One last rule: if you have a graphics service help you prepare your sell sheet, insist that it follows the format I have shown you. Specify not to use fancy fonts. Times New Roman, Georgia and Arial or equivalent are fonts that are easily read and don’t distract from the message.
And don’t allow the service to splash a lot of colors on your sell sheet. This is not a graphic arts contest; it is the place for one excellent image of your product and plain, unencumbered writing.
Several years ago, Kieu Phan, inventor of the BraBall, and I were on a visit to QVC. We were told by a buyer that our sell sheet was the best she had ever seen.
That’s why I’m a bit cranky when it comes to this sell sheet design. It works.
Oh, in case you are wondering where to buy a Wonder-Sponge, again, it’s not a real product. I just made it up for this column.
Hmmm, maybe I’m missing out on a potentially great product! It won’t be the first time.
AIDA (not the opera)
AIDA is the acronym for a four-step program used to convince potential customers to buy. It is especially effective for preparing sell sheets, which must be brief and to the point. The steps:
1. Attract ATTENTION
2. Arouse INTEREST
3. Create DESIRE
4. Call to ACTION (or show how to ACQUIRE)
AIDA was introduced to ad copy writers 1910 when an ad man named St. Elmo Lewis presented a talk titled “Is There a Science Back of Advertising?”
So it’s been around for more than a century and is still the “secret” to effective sales literature and elevator speeches.
Various gimmicks—or tactics, if you prefer—have been used by ad creators to attract attention. A curvy woman in a bikini is probably the most abused of the gimmicks. Babies, dogs, cats, owls, geckos, foxes, freaky invented creatures, and so on find their way onto TV and into magazines, but hopefully never onto an inventor’s sell sheet unless these elements have a direct connection to the product being advertised.
Attention should be gained by immediately disclosing the product and stating its main user benefit. This saves time and avoids insulting the reader’s intelligence. Telling the main user the benefit also serves to smooth the transition to the next step.
A bulleted series of subordinate benefits is intended to arouse interest and initiate the create desire step, at least to the point of sustaining the reader’s interest.
The main benefit should have enough conviction value that it will serve as the topic for expansion. Thus, writing 50 to 100 words about it below your bulleted benefits will drive home the brief tagline benefit.
Your writing should be personal to the reader. But keep your word count within range. An impatient reader will skip out and may lose interest.
The “hard-sell” ads on TV try to close the sale with gimmicks such as “But wait! There’s more!” or “Act now; supplies are limited.”
If your buyer is a catalog or TV marketer, using a gimmick will likely backfire. The “soft sell” is always acceptable. Simply tell your reader how to order, and make it as easy as possible.
When is the best time to create your sell sheet?
Make your first draft after your “Eureka moment,” while your unedited enthusiasm is at its peak. And revise it often as your project progresses.
Your sell sheet must first convince you that strangers will buy your eventual product. If it doesn’t, something is missing. Find it and begin again.—Jack Lander
By Any Other Name …
From Inventors Digest columnist Alyson Dutch:
In my public relations arena, sell sheets are seen as basic selling tools—standalone “leave behinds” for your sales team to provide to prospective customers.
The name of this tool differs from industry to industry, sometimes known as “specification sheets,” or “line sheets.” They should be created for every SKU of a product line when you are soliciting distribution.
It matters not if your business is physical or virtual; you want to arm your sales team with the tools they need and your customers with the details they need. A set of sell sheets should be branded to match the look of your company.
Some industries like to do comprehensive “look books.” The fashion world is an example, breaking down each look book into seasons such as Spring, Fall and Holiday. They still must be broken down into individual snapshots of information—one for the pea coat, cashmere hoodie and the Mom jean—because not all your line may be of interest to every retailer.