The Eight Second Grabber

by Graham Denton

You're writing an introductory letter to a busy executive to whose company you are interested in making a sale. You remember the rule of thumb about unsolicited mail: Most people decide in eight seconds whether to read it or not. What can you say that ensures your executive will read your letter and not throw it in the trash with the twenty others she's gotten that day? Tony Parinello answers this question by providing a template for the perfect "headline statement."

The headline statement, he writes in his book Selling to VITO (Very Important Top Officer), should go at the top of your letter, like a newspaper's banner headline. You can ignore the conventional advice about "proper" business-letter format, because executives "already know where they go each morning and what the name of their company is." Make the headline statement the first thing that catches her attention. Then, to make it something that will keep her attention, follow these rules:

• Be sure the statement is no more than thirty words long.
• Have it address an issue that is common in the executive's industry and that you may therefore safely assume is of interest to him or her.
• Have it highlight the measurable benefits of doing business with your company.
• Prove those benefits by citing specific factual information from a credible source that this executive will recognize and trust.
• Identify the time frame within which the benefits were achieved.

Notice how real world and specific these guidelines are. That's because a good grabber statement is an announcement of your capability, not an exercise in puffery. In summing up the focus of the headline statement, Parinello insists that it should "sound the trumpet for actual events, not hypothetical situations. You should focus on measurable results that real, live customers have enjoyed from implementing your solutions -- results that feature percentages or other figures and always incorporate a specific time reference."

Parinello gives several examples that do just that. Here are two of them.

On a letter to the senior partner of a law firm: "We've reduced overhead costs in five of the top ten law firms in Dallas and, according to Helen Wells of Wells & Wells, 'increased billable hours by 25 percent in the last 90 days.'"

On a letter to the owner of a regional hotel chain, this quote from another (noncompeting) owner: "Green Roof Inns has increased its revenues by 9 percent and improved customer service and satisfaction during the past year since implementing XYZ's guest communication services."

As these examples indicate, writing a good headline statement requires solid research, documentable evidence, and careful wordsmithing. But it's worth the effort, because it assiduously avoids one of the banes of every executive's existence -- inundation by fluffy, unproven generalities. If your letter says something solid, it will stand out from the crowd -- and you'll have earned the right to keep talking, past that eight second hurdle.