Every company, be it a large one or a small one, ultimately desires for a profit hike. Isn’t it so? Whatever agenda a company takes up, whatever be its endeavour and no matter how much money it invests, the ultimate goal that lurks behind its mind is how to drive profit in a steady manner. The very concept of sales and marketing somehow evolves out of this desire. After all, what is the purpose of manufacturing a product, until and unless it can secure for itself a potential market?

Well, with the very idea of marketing and sales, the concept of sales sheet is inextricably entwined. If you are wondering about what exactly a sales sheet refers to, here’s given a brief idea about it.

What is a Sales Sheet?

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A sales sheet is also variously termed as a product data sheet, a sales slick or a sell sheet. The primary task of a sales sheet is to make a relay of the product and that of the service details to the buyers. In one sheet format, a sales sheet features multiple information associated with the products, such as its aspects, benefits, pricing and else. Business owners offer sales sheet to its customers to help them conceive their buying decision as well as swaying such a decision.

Thus, once a new product hits the market, the product sales sheet is a mandatory marketing material that you must create.

Importance of Sales Sheet in a Business:

Your website or blog is also eligible to uphold before the customers, the features and the benefits of the products you have newly launched in the market. Now, the obvious question that arises is what is exactly so unique about a sales sheet? Why, in spite of being equipped with a website, a blog, pages in the social media platforms, you specifically require a sales sheet to relay details about your product to the customers?

As an answer to such a question, it cannot be denied that a sales sheet does make a difference in the field of marketing.

The point is, apart from making a display of the product details, a sales sheet can make a party interested in your product. The party feels an urge to call the manufacturer to discuss the buying terms of the product, after having a look at the company’s sales sheet. A sales sheet can even draw the interest of the party to help to publicise the product.

The Contents or the Elements of a Sales Sheet:

A product sales sheet incorporates the following elements:

1# Colored pictures of the concerned product, preferably taken from small angles.
2# A brief description of the product.
3# A list embodying the product specifications.
4# A merit list mentioning the product benefits and its attractive features.
5# Important details like the product’s SKU, UPC or item number to help interested customers, order the products.

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Have a look at the sales sheet of this brand of cookies. In one spreadsheet it has incorporated multiple facets of the concerned product. The sales sheet projects all the vital details about the cookies for having a better access to the market.

Let us now have a practical idea of creating effective sales sheets. A mere assimilation of the above-mentioned contents is not sufficient to boost up your marketing strategies. Some effective tips and advice can be put to use to attain the desired goal.

Here goes a list of 10 effective steps for creating a profit generating sales sheet:

1. Fix up your goals

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How do you actually want your customers to enact? Have you ever given it a thought? How do you want your customers to make a move? By visiting your website? By giving you a call? By filling in a form? Or is it by making them visit your online shopping portal, where they can directly place an order?

Have these questions popped up in your mind lately as you are pondering about how to make the most of your sales sheet? Well, if you have already thought about these, you are going well and if you haven’t yet, this is the high time you do so.

Getting answers to all these questions is important for helping you to decide upon your goals. Simply by hankering for profit, you won’t achieve a congenial environment for making sales. You need to think right and fix up the goals.

To Do# Set goals in advance and make sure that your setting goals are followed by a thorough review. Make ‘goals partner’ from the sectors of a dedicated peer group or friends’ circle. The choice, in this case, is definitely yours. After the assessment of the goals set further targets as per your discretion.

2. Make a database

Once you are done with setting your targets, you need to focus on what would help you in achieving them. After all, dreams conceived, for its fulfilment requires some actionable approach. Isn’t it so? So find out the data that your sales sheet must incorporate to help you achieve the previously set goals. A bit of homework is required in this case. Inspect, think and decide.

To Do# Make a list of the data that would reflect your product in a most inspiring manner. Incorporate into the sales sheet the product branding, its features, benefits, credentials and photos. Support these data further by details related to pricing, customer feedback and action, rating, rewards achieved, (if any) and its uniqueness. Strengthen the list with diagrammatic representations of the product marketability, through charts making comparative studies and graphs, if possible.

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Have a look at this sales sheet of Monster.com. It has got diagrammatic representations of the website’s service statistics. The other crucial elements associated with their services are also not missed out.

3. Make it tempting and motivating

How can you draw the attention of the customers? Well, can’t you just give them a little extra? Who doesn’t love incentives after all? Give your sales sheet, ample scope for generating profit. For that, help the sales sheet to stand out in the crowd, in a positive way.

To Do# Provide your customers with interesting offers and for the purpose of accelerating a sense of hurry in their mind, make the offers time-limited.

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4. Keep away from monotony

Variation spices up life in some way or the other. Unchanging and unperturbed regularity is at times stifling, retarding and boring. So why not make the sales sheet a bit more interesting by incorporating variations? Give respite to the customers’ visual frame, by breaking the monotony. Don’t make the blunder of incorporating in the sales sheet extended paragraphs in chunks. Make sure that your sales sheet doesn’t look stilted and theoretical.

To Do# Break the chunks, skim the gist and make it less cumbersome. Instead of bigger paragraphs, include precise and brief ones. Don’t tire the eyes of the customers. Enlighten them, but do maintain a laid-back approach, so that nothing seems forced to the customers.

The below sales sheet is an example of how paragraphs can be spaced out, photographs can be used to create a soothing effect on the eyes.

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5. Frame the sales sheet properly

Necessary things are to be incorporated into the sales sheet to make it compelling, otherwise, it would just end up being an ordinary one amidst the lot, hardly making any difference. The sales sheet must have a neat incorporation of the essentials to have a proper framework. Thus, pay heed to the essentials.

To Do# Give it the proper headline and the tagline, insert some essential features like bullets, particularly while writing about the benefits and the features of the products, photos having clarity, charts making comparative studies, a potential Call To Action and details about awards, ratings and testimonials, if any, and last but not the least make sure that the content in the sales sheet does not miss mentioning about the USP or the Unique Selling Point of the product. Do remember that the product USP is indeed one of the most crucial motivating factors that would move the customers.

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The given image has projected multiple options that can help you gain profit by promoting the marketing of your product.

6. Overcome sloth and keep going:

Kinesis always has a charm of its own. It asserts progress and a steady development. After all, one cannot attain perfection simply at one go without striving for success a bit. So keep going with the process of a steady growth and development. Don’t fall prey to stagnation.

To Do# Edit and re-edit the sales sheet; revise it time and again to make an analysis of what is exactly missing. Several edits should precede the completion of the final stuff.

7. Deal with the design correctly:

Calling on your memories of visiting the familiar grocery shop, you can make an analysis. Once you stand near the shop, like the others belonging to the crowd, you would find that your attention getting driven towards the colourful and the smartly decked packages. You spontaneously express your urge to know about the prices of such products. Now, why does it happen? It happens just because well-decked things appeal to us a bit differently.

The same concept applies to the sales sheets too. After all, perfect looks often end up having a greater impact on the viewers and the customers. Thus your sales sheet must be backed up by a perfect designing to catch hold of the attention of the target group.

To Do # Keep the headline and the tagline bold, highlight the product’s Unique Selling Point to draw the attention of the concerned group. Keep the photos, the charts and the other contents incorporated into the sales sheet large enough for the viewers to see clearly. Back up the written contents of the sales sheet with poignant diagrams that can substantiate the contents more logically, gaining credibility.

Look how the below sales sheet prioritises key information and how the photos, colour and design guides the reader’s attention and guides it as per the brand’s intent.

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8. Don’t compromise on the printing cost

What is after all the purpose of taking pains for crafting the sales sheet, if it finally cannot gain a better exposure? After all, you did everything for gaining access to a lucrative customer base, isn’t it so?
The final sales sheet will be reaching you once the printing is done and unfortunately if the printing part is all messed up, it would undoubtedly turn out to be a blunder.

To Do# Use premium paper stock to print your sales sheets. Either 100lb or gloss text with UV or AQ coating would be good choices in this case. Better quality of print papers would lend the customers better impressions about your company or brand.

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Premium quality papers have been used in the given sales sheet image to render it with a smooth, glossy look.

9. Reshuffle and reconsider

Taking hasty decisions does not always bear lucrative results. A fixed idea that has shut all doors towards changeability is also too impotent to help you attain the desired success. In the context of sales sheets to you need to be constantly on the lookout for progression and betterment. Thus, do not keep your hands off designing, once the sales sheet is prepared. Rather reshuffle and reconsider.

To Do# Try different designs for the same sales sheet and assess which one can surpass in a positive way the previously made one. Do remember that your sales sheet copy and design can have a noteworthy influence on your Return on Investment (ROI).

10. Make sure that people can reach you

This is indeed a vital part and thus you simply cannot afford to miss this out. Contact information is one of the most vital elements for propelling marketing.

To Do# Give your contact information on your sales sheet as per your own choice and discretion. It may be your phone number, your email ID or a list of web addresses through which people can manage to connect with you. Just do remember that no matter what you choose, the information should be effective enough to revive and accelerate marketing.

Designing a Sales Sheet: At a Glance

• Use large images with clarity, graphics features, charts and graphs.
• Incorporate within the sales sheet all important information related to your products or services, but make sure that long, written chunks of contents are replaced with a brief and to the point, broken paragraphs.
• Choose to write the headlines in such a manner that they draw the viewers’ attention.
• Go for customized templates.
• Highlight the USP of your product.
• Use colours aesthetically instead of making the sheet look too very flamboyant.

Effective Steps for Promoting and Marketing Sales Sheet

Your sales sheet is finally prepared. Undoubtedly, you have taken pains to render it with the desired look. Now the question is what is the purpose of investing so much time on a sales sheet, until and unless it can be handed over to a target group of viewers? Thus your next focus should be its promotion and marketing, and it is perhaps one of the most important sectors of your entire agenda associated with the sales sheets.

Let us look forward to some of the most effective steps to be followed for the promotion and the marketing of sales sheet:

1. Do make a distribution of it: Sales sheet is a very effective tool for marketing on the part of a company. The better the exposure of it, the better is the familiarity gained. Thus the first step towards promoting and marketing sales sheet is to distribute it to the target group of viewers and customers. Distribution of sales sheet to the potential mass would assure the sales sheet’s better access to the target group.

To Do# Look out for fresh new opportunities for distributing your sales sheets to the target group. Try to gain access to the mass, particularly in seminars, conferences, events trade shows and try to market sales sheets through the mail out promotions.

Studies have shown that over 80% people are more likely to establish connections with you if they are given physical stuff during the initial introduction.

2. Seek for interesting templates: Try to stand out in the competition. If you are just the same as others, then definitely your putting so much effort would turn out to be pointless. Don’t forget that you should strive for being unique in your own way and you must try your best to retain the viewers.

To Do# Keep provisions in your templates for quick edits, so that you can make easy amendments in the design. The changes and the improvisations made in the sales sheet must go in tune with the likes and dislikes of the customers. Thus it cannot be denied that designing the template for a sales sheet is one of the most crucial parts of its marketing strategy.

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3. Promote its online exposure: Along with print marketing, new technologies are to be embraced for promoting a better exposure of the sales sheets. After all people of the 21st century would be more at ease to sneak into their smartphones, rather than going through the hard copies. Well, in this context, individual choices do matter.

To Do# Promote and market the sales sheets via online to gain access to a larger mass. However, do not discard the print medium. Make use of features like die-cut or foil-stamp to achieve elegant designs. Embellish the sales sheet design with an emblem or a seal that would match the concerned product. Aim for a better design that would have the potentiality to attract the mass.

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4. Send it to the independent retail stores: Once your sales sheet is crafted well, you need to think about the different ways to develop and revive your marketing strategy. Take a little bit of pain for sending the sales sheet to the independent retail stores. Keep the avenues for interaction open.
Let them know about your brand, product and the services offered.

5. Never miss out the Call To Action button: CTA is one of the most crucial aspects of the designing part. The CTA being instrumental in establishing connections between you and your promising customers, its importance cannot be belittled in any way.

To Do# Keep it conspicuous enough t draw the attention of the viewers. Don’t hesitate to do a little bit of experimentation with the sizes, shapes and the colours of the CTA buttons. After all visually appealing things do cast a better impression on the viewer’s mind.

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The given image shows how CTA has been used on a sales sheet to encourage connections with the viewers.

Thus from the prolonged discussion on the various topics associated with sales sheet, hopefully, you have been able to form some idea of its importance in the field of product marketing. The choice is, after all, yours regarding what you would prefer- placing a finished product before the customers directly or taking a course that would encourage developing sales strategies initially for better consequences in the long run. No matter what marketing strategy you choose, sales sheet will prove to be an integral part of it.