Posted by: Daniel Levis
February 28, 2007
Issue WMA #39

Robert Collier, Found ALIVE!

In this special interview issue:

• The “council of elders” secret to sparking your creative intelligence and solving business problems …
• How a wet behind the ears kid pulled off a 3,900% ROI mailing …
• The crux of the research biscuit …
• The real reasons people buy – six core motives that spur people to action …
• How to use reverse psychology to gently lead your prospect to an immediate decision …
• A priceless lesson in information marketing, from one of the world’s best …
• And much more!

Dear Web Business Builder:

One of the most remarkable passages in Napoleon Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich” talks about Hill’s Council of Elders. Hill had a very unusual, and unusually effective way of sparking his creative intelligence and solving problems. It went something like this …

Each evening in the quiet of his study, Hill would close his eyes and enter a council chamber in the theatre of his mind. Next, he would take his seat as Chairman at the council table, and welcome 9 elder advisors (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Luther Burbank, Thomas Paine, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and Thomas Edison) who gradually entered the chamber to take their seats.

Hill would then lay the challenges of the day before them, and seek their advice. Hill’s study of the records of these great men’s lives was so intensive that the characters actually came to life, engaging in vigorous dialogue over the topics he put before them.

As a copywriter, if you were to engage in such a practice, there’s no doubt that one of the men you would include in your council of elders would be Robert Collier.

So this week I decided to take some of the most common copywriting challenges, and interview Mr. C. for the answers.

Here goes …

Daniel Levis: So tell me, how did you get into this racket? What was your background before becoming a copywriter?

Robert Collier: My first foray as a sales writer, believe it or not, occurred when I was working as a coal-mining engineer. The company I was working for was falling on hard times, was desperate to spur sales, and I was elected to do so by way of a letter writing campaign.

I had no training, save a series of books by Herbert Watson called “Applied Business Correspondence” and “The Business Correspondence Library” that I ordered specifically for this purpose. To my surprise, the results of my first efforts were outstanding. I seemed to have a knack for it.

Later, the success of those letters inspired me to approach my Uncle’s publishing company, P.F. Collier, with an idea to sell books through the mail. Most of the brass there just laughed at my idea. They had already tried on six different occasions to sell books through mail order without any success. One man there had burned through $25,000 to sell just18 sets of books.

Luckily I found a few sympathizers who had seen the results of my coal selling letters, and I was finally given a shot. I had six months to prove my idea, and was given a $25 a week stipend, plus a 5% commission on the book sales that came in through my efforts.

At the time, Bruce Barton, whom I consider to this day to be one of the finest copywriters alive was assistant sales manager in the advertising department. Barton took me under his wing in preparing the very first mailings. Tom Beck, the top book salesman – one of those rare individuals who could sell anything to practically anyone – also gave me his full support in preparing the appeals that I would use in those letters.

I was given a list of stale old names to mail to that had been returned from the sales department as unsalable. Nonetheless I was optimistic …

We dropped 10,000 pieces in the mail as a test, and when the returns started coming back, everyone’s jaw dropped practically to the floor. 4½ orders for every 100 pieces mailed!

Imagine a 4½ response on a set of $39 books, and that was in 1913. Since each mailing piece cost only 4 cents, each sale came back for under a dollar. That’s a 3,900% return on investment! Needless to say, my little experiment was a runaway success.

I was hooked!

Daniel Levis: You went on to sell all manner of goods and services through the mail – a wide variety of different things from lawn maintenance to financial services. How do you go about researching such a wide variety of different projects?

Robert Collier: First, I learn what I can about my reader, and then close my eyes and try to be him. I ask myself, “If I were this reader, what would I want?” An accurate answer to that question, more than anything else, determines the fate of your promotion.

A letter may have perfect diction, a finished style; it may bristle with attention getters, and interest arousers; it may follow every rule; yet when it gets to the Hall of Judgment where the reader sits, if the appeal is wrong, it will end up in the trash. Conversely, a crudely composed letter that strikes just the right appeal will come home to the sender with check attached.

Research is about identifying the strongest motives that propel your prospect, finding an appeal within your product that helps satisfy those motives, and then deciding what emotion will best spark immediate action.

Before I ring for my stenographer, my research tells me what effect I want to produce in my reader – what feeling I need to arouse in him that will compel him to act. To determine this, I ask myself, “If I were this reader, how would I have to feel before I would place such an order?”

You may convince his intellect that the thing you want him to do is right for him, but until you arouse in him an urgent desire to do it, until you make him feel that whatever effort it requires is of no account compared to the satisfaction it will bring him, he’ll never do it. Your letter may be perfect in every other way, but if it fails to arouse the right feeling, you might as well throw it away and start over. It will never make you money.

Appeal to the reason, by all means. Give people a logical excuse for buying, that they can tell to their friends and use to salve their own conscience. But if you want to sell goods, if you want action of any kind, base your real urge on some primary emotion. That’s the real purpose of research: to isolate the most powerful motive for doing the thing you ask.

Daniel Levis: You mention putting yourself in your reader’s shoes to determine his strongest motives. What specifically do you mean by “motive”?

Robert Collier: Doubtless if you ask your prospects, “why did you buy?” you will hear myriad answers. But if you dig deep, you’ll discover that lurking beneath those answers are six prime motives that make people buy. They are love, gain, duty, pride, self-indulgence, and self-preservation.

And often, they are so mixed together it is tough to tell which one to work on more strongly. A man may want a car, for example, solely due to the sense of pride its fine appearance brings him. But unless money is of no matter, pride alone is seldom enough to make him buy.

To make the pride motive so strong so as to throw caution to the wind, you must reinforce it with a touch of self-indulgence, a healthy measure of love and duty to wife and family, and a large dash of gain. Show him how the old car hurts his standing, how repair bills and higher oil and gas costs eat into the difference in cost, and how he can effect some savings now that may not be possible later.

Of course, the more motives you can bring to bear, the more successful your letter will become, provided those motives impel your prospect to take the action you desire.

“If someone were to make your boy a thief”, read a National Cash Register Company letter. “Feeling as you do about your own boy, is it right to put temptation in the way of other men’s boys?” Love and duty and pride are all intermingled there, with an added inducement of gain implied – of savings in losses to petty theft and the like. But love is the dominant motive.

Love is by far the strongest motive. You have only to read the papers to see that every day men are giving away everything for it – riches and honor, even life itself. Yet love is one of the most difficult motives to exercise effectively in a letter.

Gain, now that is easy. True, it has been worked to death, but we are a gullible race. Tell a man for instance, that you only have two cars left in stock, or ten suits in his size, or just a hundred sets of books, and that when the new stock arrives the price will be advanced 25%, but since he is an existing customer you are holding one of these for him at the old price, and he will believe you.

Self Preservation is of course the need to avoid bodily injury, and sustain one’s health, wealth, and relationships. Let me give you an example of a self-preservation appeal: “If you have ever driven your car in a rainstorm, you know how annoying it is – and dangerous too – to have your windshield clouded with water. How many times have you narrowly avoided accidents under these conditions?”

And last but not least, self-indulgence. This is simply the desire to live a more comfortable and enjoyable life. It sells a mighty lot of product. Take this little bit of opening copy here …

“Are you like Mr. Fuller, in that you dislike shaving with cold or lukewarm water? Mr. Fuller always grumbled when it was cold. Usually it was cold. You know how the ordinary hot water system works early in the morning. But the Fullers found their way out of their troubles. Now – nowadays, no matter how early they arise, there’s always steaming hot water the instant the faucet is turned on.”

Daniel Levis: OK, so we’ve talked about researching your prospect, stepping into his shoes to uncover his dominant motive, and how important it is to arouse his emotions in order to get him to really desire the product you’re selling. But how do you actually get him to take action?

Robert Collier: In every sale, there comes a critical moment. Your prospect is almost convinced. You have his attention… you have aroused his interest… and just about persuaded him that he must have the thing you are offering.

Desire, and the appeal of a bargain are goading him on, but caution, inertia – call it what you will – causes him to hold back. He is hesitating, teetering, first this way, and then that. Too much urging will make him draw back. Too little will leave him where he is. What will you do?

Give him a push without seeming to do so! You already know the motive to arouse to make your sale. Now look for some easy preliminary task to set that motive busy. Try to ease your prospect to a point where it becomes easier to keep going forward than it is to stop, turn around, and go back.

You see examples of this in personal selling all the time. What does an automobile advertisement try to get you to do? Buy a car? Not at all. “Come and look at our beautiful new models…” that’s all. No obligation whatsoever. It will be a pleasure to show them to you.

You go, and what happens? Does the salesman urge you to buy? Not if he’s smart. He shows you around most readily, notes the car of your fancy… gets you to sit in it, to feel the clutch, to experience its comfort and luxury. Then he asks if you would like to drive it out to the country next Sunday, “just to see how beautifully it runs.”

He has it out in front of your house at the appointed time, or a little before. He gives up the driver’s seat to you at once. He says nothing about a sale, just calls your attention to the gentle purr of the motor, to the way it breasts the hill, to this little comfort, to that little knickknack.

And when he gets you back to your door, he gently insinuates: “Now, what time shall I send it around tomorrow?” or “Well let’s take a look at the old car now, and see how much we could allow on it.” And before you know it, you have a new car.

That is salesmanship. And that is the sort of salesmanship you have to put into every letter. Just remember that nearly every man balks at a decision that is going to cost him money. He wants time to think it over. He hates to commit himself definitely.

So humor him. Tell him frankly, “Don’t decide now. Plenty of time for that later. Just fill in your height, your weight, and your collar size on the enclosed card, and we’ll send you a Keep Dry Coat in your size. Try it out. Wear it for a week. Take it downtown and compare it with anything you can find in your local stores. Then decide.”

Do you see how much easier that is?

There are only two reasons why your reader will do as you tell him to in your letter. The first is that you’ve made him want something so badly that he reaches out for your order card to get it.

The other is that you have aroused in him the fear that he will lose something worthwhile if he does not do what you say. It’s critical you work on both of these motives in your close. At the end of your letter, apply a “snapper”. Put him over the edge by making him aware of the consequences of inaction.

Daniel Levis: That’s great. OK, last question. Tell me about your biggest success, and in particular the lesson contained.

Robert Collier: For a long time we had the idea to sell a set of books on practical psychology. Like most such ideas, it seemed likely to stay in the back of our minds, and nothing would ever come of it. Until one day, when we hit upon an idea that would sell such a set of books!

That was a different matter. Sales letters were our daily bread and butter. Sales letters were unlike books in that when you got an idea for a sales letter, you used it! So we got that one down on paper as quick as might be.

Even in the cold light of the morning it looked pretty good. In fact it looked so good, that we decided to try a few thousand as a test. Of course the books were still in nebulous form, but we knew what they would contain (when, and if they were issued), so we proceeded to outline all of that in the letter. Then we mailed a thousand of each to ten different lists.

Did they pull? The returns from that letter nearly gave us heart failure. They pulled as much as 9% from people who’d never heard of us before! For the next month we worked night and day to get the books written. And as soon as they were written, we arranged for another million letters to go out in the mail, followed by another million as soon as those returns came in.

Within six months we had received over a million dollars worth in orders, all from that one letter. That was in 1926.

Now here is the lesson. A lot of the books came back. They would, of course, considering the way the letter we used oversold them. The idea was excellent, but no book could live up to the promises made in that letter. But those who did like the books did not think that they were oversold. Judging by some of the letters we received, they felt that everything that we had promised had come to pass.

So the question is, how much of a mistake was overselling the book? When the cost of shipping averages only 16 cents, it would seem better to get from 4 to 9 percent of orders and have 40% of them returned, than to receive the 1 to 2 percent that publishers are satisfied with and have 10% of them come back.

At any rate, the former is certainly the quicker way to build a customer list. And build one we did in short order. By the end of the first year, we had well over 100,000 names on our books.

The second year we rolled out even further, but were forced to change the name of our little set of booklets which were called “The Book Of Life”, because it turned out another concern had been marketing a book by the same name for years.

We took the opportunity to expand and enlarge it, and renamed it “Secrets Of The Ages”. I guess we were on to something, because you can still buy the product of our little experiment today, 80 years later.

Just hop on over to Amazon, and The Secrets of the Ages are yours.

Daniel Levis: Well thank you very much Bob for stopping by Web Marketing Advisor today. I really appreciate it. For anyone interested in picking up Robert’s wonderful book The Robert Collier Letter Book, click here.

Robert Collier: My pleasure.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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P.S. Robert Collier talked at length on human motives in the Robert Collier Letter Book, but for some reason did not delve deeply into the emotions, save a few references to the “vanity” emotions.

In studying his letters, it became clear to me that this was indeed a very strong recurring thread in many of his letters. Just before his death, Robert was asked to identify his most successful sales letters, and invariably the ones he chose were shining examples of this.

I dissected those letters (most of which you will NOT find in the Robert Collier Letter Book) in detail in my highly acclaimed info-product “Million Dollar Online Advertising Strategies – From The Greatest Letter Writer Of The 20th Century”. Download the first three chapters for FREE!

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