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Guest post by: Mark Satterfield Become an Author

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The key to writing sales emails that get you more new clients is to first put yourself in the shoes of your reader. If you remember no other point, it's crucial that you keep in mind that "it's all about the reader." What exactly do I mean by this?

It's very tempting in your sales emails to focus the content primarily on you. It's easy to start talking about the services you offer, how long you've been in business and locations you serve. But that's a mistake.

Your readers are not interested in you. What they are most interested in is themselves. Their problems, frustrations and business issues. Thus you want to start off your email by focusing precisely on that.

There is an old saying that the purpose of the first sentence of a sales letter or email is simply to get the reader to read the second sentence. The purpose of the second sentence is to get them to read the second paragraph. If we can get them to read that second paragraph them we have them going down the proverbial slippery slope and it's highly likely that we'll get them to read the entire message. So how do we get started?

As I alluded to earlier, the key is to focus on a specific problem your reader is facing. That is what's most likely to get their attention and say to themselves, "I better read some more." So let's talk a bit about how to communicated that problem that gets your reader's attention and makes them want to continue reading.

The opening sentence that has worked the best for me is the following: "I know from speaking with (people like you) that many of them are concerned about (a particular problem)."

Naturally you will want to put in the specific group of people that you're targeting into the first parenthesis and a very specific problem in the second one. I cannot overstate the importance of having both your target reader and your problem be very specific.

Remember that everyone thinks that their problems are unique. From a practical perspective this usually isn't true but people believe it all the same. Thus you want to make sure that your sales letters and emails convey the message that "I understand your unique issues". If you do this is the opening sentence you'll find that your readers will continue to read your entire message and ultimately do what you ask them to do in the last paragraph.

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