Master copywriter Gary Bencivenga once shared a personal story of failure:
Back in the day, Gary was working at a small direct response ad agency called Callas, Powell, Rosenthal, and Bloch.
They put out an ad in the Wall Street Journal with the headline,
“Announcing a direct response advertising agency that will guarantee to outpull your best ad.”
If you’ve been reading my writing for a while, you know how well this ad did. It attracted qualified leads like Oregon attracts aging hippies. Suddenly, crowds of qualified business owners wanted to work with CPRB. Of course, most still had to be closed in person.
So Gary went out to meet one such business owner at the guy’s office.
“Thanks for coming out,” said the businessman. “Now, tell me why I should work with you.”
(Pause for a second. And ask yourself, how would you answer this question? Do it for real. You might be ahead of Gary B, because…)
Gary, using everything he’d learned about persuasion in print, gave the businessman a show.
He listed all the proof showing how CPRB produced results… how they had worked out the perfect formula for creating winners… how they were so confident in their results that they would back them up with a creative “Either it succeeds, or you pay nothing” guarantee.
Gary talked for an eternity. He laid out his entire, irrefutable case. And then he dropped back into his seat, short of breath and a little damp from the effort.
“Sounds good,” the businessman said. “Let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you.”
He never did contact Gary or Gary’s agency again.
It turns out Gary fell victim to one of the classic blunders of salesmanship and marketing, the most famous of which is, “Never sell ammunition on subscription.”
But only slightly less famous is, well, let me save that for tomorrow. And I’ll tell you what Gary could have done instead, for much better effect.
But let me ask you a question:
What got you interested in reading this post to begin with? Think about that for a second. And maybe you will come up with a reason why you want to read more similar content… and why you would like to subscribe to my daily email newsletter.