If your résumé regularly opens doors for you, congratulations.

You can probably send it with a run-of-the-mill cover letter and get your fair share of interviews. But, sometimes a job search requires more that a just-average cover letter. Sometimes it requires a Killer Cover Letter.

This is often the case if the economy is struggling, or if you work in a particularly competitive field.

Try to put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes.

What kind of pain does he or she have if his or her team is short-staffed? Or a certain kind of expertise is missing? For example, what if a sales manager is receiving 10 highly qualified leads per day, but has no sales person to cultivate those leads and turn them into sales? Potentially profitable business is going out the window.

Take time to create a strong opening.

Take a page from professional sales letter writers.

The classic outline for a sales letter is to attract attention, generate interest, arouse desire and get action. (This outline is often shortened to the more easily remembered: “AIDA”). Let’s flesh out this idea.

Attention: Your first job is to get the attention of the hiring manager. So, for instance, a purchasing agent might write: “Would you be interested in meeting a purchasing expert who saved his last employer $150,000 a year?” This opening should strike a chord with managers who are looking for purchasing people who know how to find cost savings. The key point is this: you need to get your prospects’ attention before you can get an interview appointment.

Interest: Let’s say you have succeeded in getting your prospect’s attention. Now it’s time to interest him or her in what you can do for the company. Perhaps you can highlight a success story from your most recent job.

Conviction/Desire: This is the spot where you want to emphasize what you bring to the table: additional accomplishments, experience and skills. If anything is going to help you clinch an interview appointment, it’s if your background aligns with the employer’s needs.

Action: Your goal is a job interview. Make the next step easy for the hiring manager. Enclose a self-addressed postcard (or reply form and self-addressed envelope) so all the hiring manager needs to do is drop it in the mail. And include a (businesslike) email address where you can be reached.

If your finances permit, you could offer to work for free for 30 days. (We’ve never heard of an employer who failed to pay a person who tried this approach.) Or find another way to offer a “sample” of the kind of work you could do for the prospective employer.

Explain that you will follow up. Then follow up.

Let your reader know that you will call in the next few days. Sometimes this will prompt the recruiter to phone you. If not, you will need to get on the phone. This step can’t be skipped. Even if you end up leaving a voicemail message, it demonstrates that you are a person who keeps his or her word.

Make some notes before your pick up the phone. You want to know if your knowledge and skills are a good match for the position. And if there is a gap, you want to know that as well. The hiring manager may be looking for experience that you have but did not include in the cover letter. In any event, whether there’s a potential match or not, it’s helpful to know what hiring managers are looking for.