By Claude C. Hopkins and Troy S. Laughren

© 2005 Troy S. Laughren All Rights Reserved
No part of this 2005 version May be reproduced in any form.

Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interests, or your profit.  They seek service for themselves. They seek a self serving benefit. Ignoring this fact is all too often a common and costly mistake in advertising.  Ads say in effect, "Buy my brand.  Give me the business you give to others.  Let me have the money."  That is not a popular appeal; it does not communicate to the prospect any benefit that serves them.

Great, powerful and profitable ads ask no one to buy, for that is useless and counterproductive.  Often they do not quote a price.  They do not say that dealers handle the product. They do not say that they are number one.

Great ads are based entirely on service.  They offer wanted information.  They communicate advantages to the user.  Perhaps they offer a sample, or to give the first product free, or to send something on approval, allowing the customer to prove for themselves, the claims without cost or risk on their part.

Some of these ads seem selfless.  But they are based on the knowledge of human nature.  The writers know how people are led to buy.

Here again is salesmanship.  The good salesperson does not merely cry a name.  He doesn't say, "Buy my product or service."  He helps the customer understand his side of the service until the natural result, is to buy.

A brush maker has some 2,000 canvassers who sell brushes from house to house.  He is enormously successful in a business which would seem very difficult.  And it would be if his salespeople asked the housewives to buy.

But they don't.  Instead they simply knock on the door and say, "I was sent here to give you a brush.  I have samples here and I want you to take your choice."

The housewife is all smiles and attention.  In picking out one brush she sees several she wants.  She is also anxious to reciprocate the gift.  So the salesperson gets an order.

Another entrepreneur sells coffee in some 500 cities.  Again the salesperson drops in with a half-pound of coffee and says, "Please accept this package and try it.  I'll come back in a few days and see how you liked it."

Even when he returns he doesn't ask for an order.  He explains that he wants to send the woman a fine kitchen utensil.  It isn't free, but if she likes the coffee he will credit five cents on each pound she buys until she has paid for the utensil.  Always some form of service – a benefit for the customer.

The maker of the electric sewing machine motor found advertising difficult.  So, taking some good advice, he ceased soliciting a purchase.  Instead, he offered to send to any home, through any dealer, a motor for one week's use.  With it would come a person, to show how to operate it.  "Let us help you for a week without cost or obligation," said the ad.  Such an offer was resistless, and about nine in ten trials led to a sale.

Cigar makers send out boxes to anyone and say, "Smoke ten, then keep them or return them if you wish."

Makers of books, computers, videos, kitchen cabinets, vacuum cleaners, etc., send out their products without any pre-payment.  They say, "Use them for a week, then do as you wish, keep them or send them back all without financial risk, obligation or penalty." Practically all merchandise sold by mail or via the Internet is sold subject to return. Promote this mechanism of return that is already in place and you will out market, out position and out sell your competition every time.

These are all common principles of great personal salesmanship.  Even the most ignorant peddler applies them.  Yet the salesman-in-print very often forgets them.  He talks about his interest.  He blazons the company name, as though the prospect cared.  His attitude all too often is, "Drive people to the store" and that is his attitude in everything he does. He does not attempt to sell them.

People can be coaxed but not driven.  Whatever they do, they do so to please only themselves.  Fewer mistakes would be made in advertising and more fortunes made if these immutable laws were never forgotten.