Once upon a time, somewhere in America, there lived a very successful life insurance salesman.
He couldn’t speak, and he was bound to a wheelchair.
And yet, when it came to selling life insurance, the man was tremendous.
He used a marker and a little dry-erase board to communicate. Patiently, he would write his questions on the board, and then he’d hand it over to his prospects. His most effective question, the one that flipped the switch and lit up his prospects’ brains, was:
“If we lose you, where will your family live?”
I read this story in Jim Camp’s Start with No. Camp used it to illustrate the power of painting a vision of the prospect’s pain. “No vision,” Camp used to say, “no decision.”
Of course, in written copy, it’s not always the best choice to start asking questions. The dynamic is different than when you have a real person sitting across from you. But the same principle applies.
Create vision in your prospects.
There are lots of tricks and techniques for doing it. But there’s one easy guiding principle that lords above them all:
Create a vision in yourself first.
Your prospects will pick up on it, however you choose to communicate, and they will make the decision — the one you’d like for them to make.