Cover Letters or Sales Letters?
By Kevin Donlin | May 21st, 2008
My speech at yesterday’s Star Tribune Career Expo was a lot of fun. It was my 20th keynote address for them since 2000. We had a standing-room-only crowd of 100+ people spilling out the front door — I love when that happens.
By the way, I’m available to speak almost anywhere in North America — if you have a speaker’s budget, call me at 952-946-7952 
Here’s a small taste of my 60-minute talk, on the topic of …
Cover letters.
They’re not terribly fun or exciting to write. But you need to send one with your resume if you want to be taken seriously.
Much has been written about how to write them. And much cover letter advice is dull, wrong, or both.
Think about it: What’s the job of your cover letter? To sell the employer on reading your resume and calling you to interview. In other words, your cover letter is really a sales letter.
So why do so many cover letters read like HR forms or IRS tax documents? I dunno. But it’s not helping your job search to emulate them.
Instead, you can learn more in one afternoon spent reading your junk mail than you can in a month of Sundays reading every cover letter book on Amazon.com. I’m serious.
Stop sending cover letters. Start sending sales letters.
And here’s an easy way to start doing that today: End your next cover letter with a P.S.
Why?
For the same reason you’ll find a P.S. in every single sales letter you get when you open your mail at home tonight — because the P.S. always gets read.
The fact that you don’t see P.S. in many (any?) cover letters is a screaming opportunity for you to stand out.
In your P.S., simply say the one, most-important thing you want employers to remember about you.
Example:
P.S. — Call me today to learn how I saved $45,689 in customer service costs for my employer in December 2007.
You’ll know you have a good P.S. when you can read it to someone and their reaction is either, “Wow,” or “How did you do that?”
Important: This goes for email or snail mail cover letters. Include a P.S. no matter how your cover letter gets delivered.
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September 24th, 2008 at 2:41 am
Dear Kevin,
If I researched a few employers / companies I would like to work for, but they do not have a job opening at present, will it be a good idea still to send them a sales cover letter? And then a phone call after 3 days?
Also, what to do when my educational qualifications do not meet the required qualifications for the position. Or my educational career isn’t good while my technical skills meet the requirements quite well?
Also, my Website has my resume online and anyone can view it. I’ll try to put some cover letters and thank you notes online too so others can benefit. Can you make a section here on your website for cover letter and resume samples which users are willing to share with others?
Regards,
Deboo