How to harness the reverse testimonial

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In his Adweek copywriting book, marketing genius Joe Sugarman described an interesting technique.

He called it the “reverse testimonial.”

Let me illustrate it by talking about myself. Or more specifically, about my persona on my aromatherapy website, Unusual Health.

You see, in the aromatherapy world, the man at the top of the pile is a guy called Robert Tisserand.

​Robert is extremely knowledgeable about essential oils.

​​For several decades, he’s lectured around the world about the science behind EOs and about how to use them safely.

​​He’s co-authored a massive book on the topic, filled with literally thousands of scientific citations. He has a huge following online, and he’s routinely considered to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, expert on essential oils.

So how does this apply to me?

Well, several people have recently asked me what my qualifications are to write about essential oils.

So I wrote an email to my aromatherapy list to answer exactly this question. And I started by talking about Robert Tisserand, and how great he is.

I then said how I don’t claim to be an essential oil expert, and how I never expect to have the kind of EO knowledge that Robert has. But then comes the twist, where I explain why this is actually a good thing for my readers.

You’ll have to be on my aromatherapy list to know exactly how I pull this off.

But how I pull off the twist is not the point. The point is that I used Robert Tisserand and his status as “one of the world’s leading experts in aromatherapy” to work for me.

That, in a nutshell, is Joe Sugarman’s reverse testimonial.

You start off by talking about the unbeatable advantages a competitor has over you — including testimonials and social proof — and then you turn that around to actually work in your favor.

Anyways, this might work for you as well, if you are not yet the man at the top of the pile in your market.

By the way, if you need help with sales emails, you might like my upcoming book on the topic. It distills what I’ve learned by writing for clients in the health space (and for my own aromatherapy list).

For more info, or to sign up for a free copy, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

I get bullied on Facebook, woman comes to my rescue

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About a week ago, a woman named Alexis came to my defense on Facebook.

The back story is that a growing number of people had started calling me out as a scammer.

I had been running an ad to promote The Little Black Book of Essential Oil Scams, a free lead magnet for Unusual Health, my aromatherapy mailing list.

The ad was running successfully for a long while.

But eventually, people started accusing me (yes, me!) of being the scam. They said I was trying to charge $10 for The Little Black Book, which I claimed to be giving away for free.

The real issue was that I had a “thank you” page after people opted in for the free lead magnet.

At the top of the page, I had instructions (in regular font) that explained the ebook will be sent by email.

Below that, I gradually worked my way into a sales letter (including a proper, large headline) for another aromatherapy book I am selling, Essential Oil Quick Start Guide.

Now last Friday, I was on a webinar offered by copywriting legend Parris Lampropoulos.

And Parris explained exactly why I was getting bullied and called out as a scammer (and no, he wasn’t talking about me specifically).

Said Parris, people’s eyes are drawn to large text on the page. That’s why he’s against using pre-heads (text before the headline) if they have any kind of critical message. People simply won’t read them.

And that’s what was happening with my thank-you page — the pre-head was effectively the download instructions, and many people weren’t reading them.

Easy enough to solve.

I kept the exact same message, but upped the font of the first sentence of the download instructions to make it clear that is something people should read.

Voila.

The complaints stopped immediately.

And several people, including Alexis, even came to my defense against the angry mob, saying how people should read the instructions and how I’m not trying to scam anyone.

So the lesson is to avoid pre-heads.

And more broadly, it’s to realize how design and overall marketing can completely dominate the copywriting message you might have.

This is something I’ll talk about in more detail in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. For more info on this book, or to get a free copy when it’s out, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

How to abuse your customers into buying from you

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There’s a lot you can learn from chick flicks.

Take for example, the evergreen romantic comedy Bridget Jones’s Diary. It’s about a 30-something single woman, a bit fat, a bit messy, not too successful.

Throughout the movie, Bridget is searching for a nice, sensible boyfriend to go out with. She eventually succeeds — by not becoming bitter, by putting herself out there, by picking herself up when she’s down. At least that’s the surface script.

But there’s an underlying script as well.

After all, the guy that Bridget winds up with — Mark Darcy — starts off by cruelly and unironically insulting her:

“I do not need a blind date, particularly not with some verbally incontinent spinster who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish, and dresses like her mother.”

Ouch.

Mark keeps this up for much of the movie.

Of course, it turns out he’s not such a bad guy after all. This makes it ok that Bridget winds up with him before the credits roll.

It gets better —  we hope

And that’s the underlying script.

It seems to say, even when somebody verbally or emotionally abuses you, there’s hope that they might actually like you.

I think many people subconsciously hope for this in real life as well. And that’s why abuse can help you make sales — as long as you keep it subtle and ethical.

As an example of this, take Joe Karbo’s famous ad, The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches.

I’ve been talking about it for the past few days.

In one part of this ad, Joe says something like, “I will ask you to send me ten dollars for something that won’t cost me 50 cents.”

That’s borderline insulting.

And then he twists it further by calling you a “darned fool” if you don’t take him up on his offer.

At this point, you might be ready to boil over with indignation.

So Joe stops the abuse. He tells you how his offer is so valuable that you shouldn’t care if he is making a profit, because you’ll make a lot more.

This abuse-then-soothe pattern is something you can use on different levels.

At the sales argument level, like Joe did. Or to structure an entire sales letter. Or even across different sales messages — for example, within email campaigns.

Speaking of which, if you want info on how to structure email campaigns, you’ll want to read my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space.

You’d be a darned fool not to do it.

After all, I’ve written successful sales emails for some very big businesses, and I’ll be sharing my insights within this book — which you can get for free, if you sign up now. More info here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

How to overcome being nervous, with Neil Strauss AKA Style

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I once listened to an unusual Mixergy interview.

Andrew Warner, the guy who runs Mixergy, typically interviews successful entrepreneurs for his show.

This time however, his guest was Neil Strauss.

AKA Style.

AKA the guy who wrote The Game, the book that exposed the underground pick up community and made it a mainstream phenomenon.

The strange thing was that Andrew, who had probably interviewed hundreds of people up to then, was nervous during this interview with Neil.

Neil, who is a very experienced interviewer himself on top of being a high-performing pick up artist, had this advice for Andrew:

“If you’re ever feeling nervous, call it out.”

Neil was saying that, in business as well as socially, you always want to beat someone to their objection.

If you raise the objection before it occurs to your adversary, then the objection loses its force.

This relates to what I was talking about yesterday. It was about Joe Karbo’s price argument in his famous ad “The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches.” Joe wrote something like:

“I’m going to ask you to send me 10 dollars for something that’ll cost me no more than 50 cents. And I’ll try to make it so irresistible that you’d be a darned fool not to do it. After all, why should you care if I make $9.50 profit if I can show you how to make a lot more?”

That first bit, about the 50 cents, serves multiple purposes.

One of them is to raise a possible objection.

Try to imagine the ad without it:

You tell the prospect how you’ll ask him to send you $10, and that he’ll be a darned fool not to do it, because this information is worth way more than $10.

Maybe the guy will buy it. But maybe he’ll also say,

“Sounds good, but why $10 exactly? And how much are you making off this? It sounds fishy.”

So that first sentence, about the 50 cents, makes a small but significant difference — it diffuses the objection before it arises in the prospect’s mind.

And this isn’t the only reason to use this argument.

It’s not even the main reason, in my opinion.

I’ll talk about why tomorrow.

For now, if you want more copywriting advice, you might like my upcoming book. It deals with email marketing for the health space, including writing the actual copy. You can find out more about it here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The lazy man’s way to addressing price concerns

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Have you ever heard of the 1970’s version of Tim Ferris?

His name was Joe Karbo.

Like Tim, Joe started with a successful direct response business.

And like Tim, Joe then wrote a book teaching a mass audience how they too could use modern marketing techniques to get rich.

It sounds a lot like Tim’s “4-hour Workweek.” Except, Joe’s version came out about 40 years earlier, and had an even better title:

“The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches”

Joe sold this book through a full-page, all-text ad he ran in mainstream magazines. The ad is worth tracking down because it’s full of good lessons. The one I want to focus on today is how it addressed the price of Joe’s book.

Very soon into the ad, Joe announced that he will be selling something (without saying what). And he immediately said it will cost $10 (about $60 in today’s money).

What’s more, he freely admitted that it won’t cost him more than 50 cents to make this thing. And then came the kicker. In Joe’s own words:

“And I’ll try to make it so irresistible that you’d be a darned fool not to do it. After all, why should you care if I make $9.50 profit if I can show you how to make a lot more?”

Obviously, Joe was successful. He managed to sell 3 million copies of his book using this approach.

​So what’s going on behind the scenes of this sales argument?

I think there are two crucial parts to it.

One is the provocation (“It won’t cost me 5% of what I’ll charge you, and yet you’ll pay”).

The other is the chance to lay out the benefits (“You get something more valuable than the price because XYZ”).

Now I see a lot of marketers today using just the second, benefits part of this sales argument. They ignore the first, provocation part.

I think that’s a mistake for two reasons. I’ll talk about each of these two reasons in more detail in upcoming emails.

For now, if you need a lazy man’s way to get your sales emails to actually make money, you might like my upcoming book. It deals with email marketing for the health space, and it covers how I’ve written emails that actually tripled sales for big direct response companies.

For more info about this book,  check out the ad on the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Man brutally accuses woman of wearing 1980’s outfit

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One time, I was walking down the street when I saw a pretty girl.

I ran up to her, and I said, “Hello. I wanted to tell you that you look very nice.”

The girl looked at me coldly and said, “Thank you.” She seemed suspicious and ready to move on right away.

So what to do? How to keep the conversation going for a bit? Should I ask her where’s she’s from? Or what she does for a living? Or what her plans are for the rest of the day?

Nope.

I think all those things would have made the girl more defensive still, and would have sent her packing as soon as she gave me a curt answer.

So instead, I took a different tack and I said:

“I’ll tell you what I noticed about you. I thought you looked very elegant on top” — here I gestured with my open hand from the girl’s head down across her body — “like you work in a fancy law office. But there’s one thing that doesn’t seem to match.”

The girl’s eyes opened wide at this point. I continued:

“It’s these big white sneakers you’re wearing. They give you a 1980’s, Melanie Griffith, Working Girl kind of look.”

The girl started laughing — and she started to talk. No, it’s not a 1980’s look. She has an extra pair of flats in her bag, just it’s so cold outside so she changed into sneakers. And it’s not a law office where she works, but a graphic design studio.

Now that’s something I can work with. But why do I bring this story up?

Well, for the past 4 days, I’ve been talking about alternatives to asking crappy, yes-seeking questions. One of these alternatives was to ask open-ended questions, in the style of negotiation expert Jim Camp.

The thing is, there are situations where the other side is so cold that asking them any kind of question doesn’t work. It doesn’t get you any kind of useful information. It doesn’t get them engaged. And very likely, it kills the interaction.

So what’s the alternative?

Well, it’s to take the advice of pick up artists such as Wayne Elise AKA Juggler — and do what I did in the story above. Simply call out what you see. In other words, make assumptions and verbalize them.

The magical thing is, you don’t need to be right.

Of course, if you’re on a sales call rather than talking to a girl on the street, you don’t want to seem frivolous. But even if you make an assumption that turns out to be incorrect, odds are good that your adversary will jump in to correct you — which is a big step forward, because now you have something to work with.

Anyways, this is the fourth and final alternative I have to asking yes-seeking questions. Tomorrow I’ll be back to more traditional copywriting and marketing topics.

For now, if you want my thoughts on how to apply assumptions to email marketing, specifically for the health space, check out my upcoming book:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The yellow balloon sales principle

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I saw a tense dog-man standoff at a park near my house.

The dog, a German boxer, was on top of a little hill. The man, the dog’s owner, was at the bottom of the hill, calling to the dog to come down.

The dog stared and didn’t move. The man called again. The dog continued to stare.

Eventually, the man started to walk away. The dog still kept his spot on top of the hill, and didn’t budge.

And then, as the man was walking away, he slowly took out a bright yellow object from his pocket. The dog started charging full speed down the hill. The man put the yellow object to his lips and started to blow. (It turned out to be a balloon.)

The dog was there in a second, bouncing up and down as the man held the balloon just above the height that the dog could reach.

Now for the past few days, I’ve been writing about alternatives to asking yes-seeking questions. So far, I talked about vision-building questions and no-seeking questions — both of them based on what negotiation expert Jim Camp used to teach.

Well, today I have something out of the playbook of email marketing guru Ben Settle. In fact, it’s something I’ve talked about in this blog already. It’s what I called Ben’s “sink-or-swim” close. That’s when you tell your prospect something like:

“If you don’t believe this technology/service/information can help you be more competitive, then simply don’t buy it.”

And then you wait and allow them to make a decision.

Of course, you have to do a good job painting a vision before you do this. And as Ben likes to say, you have to do it on principle, rather than as a tactic. In other words, you have to be confident you’ve got a good offer, and you have to accept that even so, some people still won’t buy.

Not everyone is right for your offer and that’s ok. Because when you find a prospect who’s right for your offer, you’ll see something like I saw at the park.

They’ll think. They’ll stare. And they’ll start to move. Next thing you know, they’ll be charging down the hill towards that big yellow balloon you’ve put in front of their face, and you will soon have a sale.

At least, that’s how it worked with me in the case of the sales letter that Ben sent.

Anyways, if you don’t need sales emails like this written for your business, then, you know, that’s ok. Otherwise, you can get an idea of how to write them yourself, with a free copy of my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. More info here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Overweight passenger forces flight attendants to wipe his butt

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This one comes from Monday’s New York Post:

“An overweight passenger aboard a Taiwanese airliner forced flight attendants to remove his pants so he could use the toilet — then wipe his butt as he moaned in pleasure, according to reports.”

Yes, it really happened. The question is how.

How exactly does one grown human being force another human being to wipe his butt?

After all, there are frequently plain-clothes police or air marshals on board planes to deal with rowdy passengers. And even if not, a team of flight attendants can subdue a single passenger, even an overweight one.

The fact is, this passenger didn’t use force to get his butt wiped. The only option that’s left then is a kind of nuclear persuasion.

Here’s how it apparently went down:

The man asked for assistance using the lavatory.

The flight attendants refused.

The man then dropped his pants and threatened to relieve himself on the floor.

That seemed to soften up the flight attendants a little, and the man was helped into the lavatory. One thing led to another, and a couple of latex gloves later, the man was moaning in pleasure as a female flight attendant wiped his butt for him.

Now this is a pretty gruesome and shocking story. I’m retelling it because I’m hoping it will make the following point stick in your mind.

It’s again something from top negotiation coach Jim Camp (I’ve written about him often), and it’s in continuation of the “don’t look for a YES” emails I’ve written over the past few days.

You see, Camp’s big thing was trying to get people to tell him NO. In fact, he even wrote a couple of books on the subject, one of them being, “Start with NO.”

According to Camp, it’s only when people say “no” that they make a real decision. A “yes” doesn’t mean much, and “maybe” is even worse.

So what does this have to do with the above story?

Well, there’s a powerful vision created when a 440-pound passenger drops his pants on a plane and effectively says, “Do you want me to take a shit right here?”

It’s possible that some people would say “maybe” or “yes” to this. The flight attendants in question apparently didn’t, and their saying NO allowed the man to get what he wanted.

Can this same approach work for you?

That’s going to depend on the question you’re asking. And who you’re talking to.

For example, if I ask you if you need help with your sales emails, how might you respond?

You might tell me NO. And I’d be happy to hear it, because I’d know you’re not interested in my offer, so I should focus my energy elsewhere.

​You might tell me MAYBE, in which case I wouldn’t pursue the conversation any further.

However, you might also say YES. Which, as Camp would tell you, is far from meaning you will like my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. But it does mean you might be interested in getting notified when it comes out. That’s because if you sign up now, you can get your copy for free.

If that’s what you want to do, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Good Will Camping

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Yesterday, I ragged on yes-seeking questions.

Today, I want to offer up an alternative — one of four I’ll be covering over the next few days. And to do that, let’s talk Good Will Hunting.

That’s the flick that put Matt Damon on the map in the role of Will Hunting, the supernaturally talented math genius from the slums of Boston who literally mops the floors at MIT.

The relevant scene for us is when Will is sitting opposite a shrink named Sean Maguire (played by Robin Williams).

Shrink Maguire is trying to draw Will out of his shell. “You can do anything,” the shrink seems to be saying, “so take advantage of your opportunities.”

Will gets defensive about this. He says how there’s nothing wrong with doing manual labor or with mopping floors — there’s even honor in it.

Shrink Maguire doesn’t argue with this. He doesn’t say, “Yeah, but…” He also doesn’t ask, “Isn’t there more honor in being a world-renowned scientist?”

Instead, he simply asks,

“You could be a janitor anywhere. Why did you choose to work in the most prestigious technical college in the whole fucking world?”

This causes Will to pause. And it slowly but surely sets off something in his head, which leads to the movie’s eventual happy ending.

So what happened?

Well, the point of asking that question was not to one-up Will’s smarts, or to trap him in a lie. At least not if you listen to master negotiation coach Jim Camp, whose playbook this question comes straight out of.

Camp advocated asking open-ended questions. The point of this was to “build vision” — to make the other side clearly see their own dire situation in their own minds.

It’s the only way to convince people of anything, Camp believed. And with his track record of successful billion-dollar negotiations in some of the most competitive business markets in the world, Camp probably knew what he was talking about.

Anyways, this idea of creating vision applies to in-person sales, and it applies to sales copywriting as well. Not necessarily in the form of asking open-ended questions. But creating a vision — such as by retelling a scene from a movie — is a very powerful way to drive home a point and to make the sale.

Speaking of which, if you need help with sales copy, you might like the ideas in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. This lays out the techniques I’ve used to triple (yep, 3x) sales from an email sales funnel for an 8-figure supplement company. To get notified when this book is out, sign up below:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The questionable hazing of “The Temp”

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“Michael always says K.I.S.S. — keep it simple, stupid. Great advice. Hurts my feelings every time.”
— Dwight Schrute, Dunder Mifflin Inc.

There’s an episode of The Office where Dwight, the top salesman for the Scranton branch of the failing paper company Dunder Mifflin, takes out Ryan “The Temp” for his first sales call.

Except, they don’t go to straight to the sales call. Instead, Dwight takes Ryan to a beet farm for a kind of bizarre hazing ritual, involving a beet seed, a wheelchair, and a wrestling match with Dwight’s cousin Mose.

Not very useful.

And neither is the sales advice that Dwight gives to Ryan when the hazing is over:

“Ask a lot of questions that all have positive answers.”

Sure enough, Ryan takes this advice and bombs during the sales call. The clients even personally tell him they don’t like him. The only thing that’s left for the two Dunder Mifflin salesmen to do is to throw eggs at the client’s corporate headquarters and go get drunk. ​

So what’s a better alternative to asking yes-seeking questions such as “Couldn’t your company use a stronger, lighter, cheaper stock of paper?”

I can personally think of four different strategies, each of which would probably work better than the questionable yes-seeking sales advice that Ryan got.

I’ll go over each of these four approaches in separate posts over the next few days.

For now, just a quick public service announcement:

I’m almost finished with my “How to become a $150/hr, top-rated sales copywriter on Upwork” book. Once it’s done, it will go up on Amazon, and will even be available for free during a short promo period. If you want to get notified when this happens, head over to the page below and plant your beet seed over there:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/