“… I want to think about it”

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In a private and exclusive Facebook group I am lucky to be a member of, marketer Travis Sago asked the following:

“How do you respond to, ‘I want to think about it?'”

Travis was talking about doing one-on-one sales, rather than persuading the masses.

His question ties in nicely to my post from yesterday. That was about A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga, and the failure he experienced when trying to sell in person.

So ask yourself. How would you respond if a prospect wants time to think about buying whatever you’re selling?

If you know online marketing, you might spike up the urgency.

“Only 72 left in stock!”

“The timer is ticking! Once it runs out, this offer will be taken down!”

“The price will go up after midnight!”

That’s not what Travis recommends. Instead, this is what he says:

“Take all the time you need. What had you considering this at all?”

That’s very clever and nuanced. It sums up, in two sentences, much wisdom that came from negotiation coach Jim Camp. Camp talked about things like going for the no… eliminating your own neediness… and using open-ended questions to get your adversary to paint a vision of his own pain.

Camp’s system was used in big ticket, multi-million dollar negotiations. Travis is using it to sell $5k and $10k and $50k offers. He says this approach has made him millions, and I believe him.

So now you know an effective way to deal with an important objection in one-on-one sales.

But what if you’re doing online mass marketing, or writing sales copy? Can you profit from Travis’s laid-back system? Or would using it be suicide?

After years of slow thinking, I have one or two thoughts on the matter. And maybe, I will share them some time soon, after the timer runs out. If you want to hear what I have to say, you can sign up for my email newsletter.

Bencivenga’s salesmanship mistake

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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.

How to write “killer copy” in any market… even if… you don’t deserve it!

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Of course you do deserve to write killer copy, right? You read the right books… you hand copy successful sales letters… you listen to what more experienced copywriters have to say.

But let’s say you’re still not getting results. What could be missing?

Here’s a bit of wisdom from the Prince of Print himself, the self-aggrandizing legend, Sir Gary of Halbert.

Gary once wrote a sales letter for a sexy sex guide. A few of the bullets:

* Three sure-fire ways to tell if your spouse or “significant other” has had sex with someone else in the last 24 hours!

* What lesbians know about oral sex which men don’t… and… why more men today are losing their women to other women!

* What (and how) a man can learn about his woman’s masturbation secrets… which will… supercharge HIS sex life!

Intriguing stuff… but the headline is 80% of the sale, right? And that’s what I want to quickly share with you today. Gary’s headline read:

“How To Have “Killer Sex” At Any Age… Even If… You Don’t Deserve It!”

It’s the tail of that headline that caught my eye.

Because if somebody’s a good prospect for your “How to” direct response product… then they’ve almost certainly got feelings of defectiveness and low self-worth. At least as regards that specific problem.

They’ve tried solving the problem before. They haven’t succeeded. They can only take that disgust and frustration in one of two places. Inwards or outwards.

Often it’s inwards.

And if you use that — even just by calling it out, like Gary did in his headline — it could make all the difference. You could be on your way to producing truly killer copy. In any market.

Sounds good?

But maybe you still feel unworthy. Maybe you feel you haven’t done all those things I listed at the top. You can fix that. And quickly. To start, click here and sign up for my daily newsletter, all about copywriting and marketing wisdom.

Nobel scientists stunned to produce must-read news

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“It will change everything,” said Andrei Lupas, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute.

“Stunning,” said Professor Venki Ramakrishnan, Nobel Laureate and President of the Royal Society. “It has occurred decades before many people in the field would have predicted.”

You may have heard the news published yesterday. DeepMind, an AI project within Google, “solved” the 50-year-old problem of protein folding. (I say “solved” because DeepMind does a good job, much better than anybody else. But it’s not perfect.)

This is a big deal. It will help scientists unravel the many mysteries still hidden in the human genome. It also means that the singularity is near. If you haven’t yet started building your anti-Skynet bunker, the time is nigh.

But let’s talk persuasion.

My point today is that the human brain looooves shortcuts.

We are giant shortcut-seeking machines.

For example, we rarely try to figure out things ourselves. Instead we look around. “What’s that guy doing? Eh, I bet that’s good enough. I’ll do the same.”

Another shortcut we take is to only look at extremes. So The World’s 50 Best Restaurants wields more clout than the Michelin guide. Why? Because it’s easier. There’s only one no. 1 restaurant among the 50 Best. But there are 135 restaurants with the highest 3-star Michelin rating.

You see my point. As Gene Schwartz said, “there is nothing so astounding as the astonishment of experts.” Particularly if those experts are the very top experts, the ones who got a Nobel Prize.

Because when you 1) take experts and 2) make them amazed, you create must-read news. And news is another shortcut that the brain loves to take, right on down to the order page. But that’s another story, for another time.

If you’d like to read that story when it comes out, you can subscribe to my daily email newsletter. It will appear there first.

Multiplication inspiration

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At the ugly age of 12, when I moved from Croatia to California, I made friends with a boy named Mike.

Mike was Mormon, and was one of six brothers and sisters. Other Mormon families I met were just as prolific.

One day, I asked Mike why it’s a thing in the Mormon community to replicate at such a vicious rate. He shrugged. “It says in the Bible to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” (I checked. It’s true. God says it to Noah after the big flood.)

Speaking of replenishing the earth, here’s a quote from the most successful direct mail promotion of all time:

“It doesn’t give me any pleasure to predict these things. But I want to get this information out to as many people as I can… because you can prepare yourself. And those you love can avoid this catastrophe. And the more of us who preserve our wealth, the better it will be for our country when the time comes to rebuild.”

That’s from The Plague of the Black Debt, a tiny booklet, written by Lee Euler. Back in the 90s, this booklet got hundreds of thousands of new customers for a little-known publisher called Agora.

There’s a big persuasion lesson hidden in these two examples.

You probably see it.

In case you don’t, I won’t spell it out here. But I did spell it out when I sent this article as an email to my newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to that newsletter here.

And why would you want to do that?

Well, to learn more about copywriting and marketing. But also, because the more good people who learn about powerful persuasion influence techniques, the better it will be for the world when the time comes to rebuild after covid-19.

A time to profit on YouTube

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“The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.”
Ecclesiastes 1:6

In March of 2019, one of my clients wrote to let me know about new changes in Facebook ad standards. Clickbaity, fear-laden, “punch-em-in-the-gut” landing page copy was out. Facebook had even started rejecting ads that had the word “you.”

In other words, the usual exploding ammo had to go back into the gun safe, to be replaced by rubber bullets.

But a few days ago, the same client wrote me with the following message:

“We’ve recently noticed a rise in more aggressive video angles on YouTube. These generally surround very broad health, wealth, and relationships angles or products. Looking to try one ourselves with an existing product already selling well on YT. As there are no disapprovals on YT atm, we want to go aggressive with this one.”

The client also linked to an example of what he had in mind. Here’s how the video starts:

“When my wife felt I can no longer provide luxury for her, she left me and it broke my heart.”

The narrator says his business crashed, his whore wife left him, he was desperate… and then got a feng shui bracelet. It’s got a special Pi Xiu design, which strongly attracts money and success.

Everything’s turned around now. Business is blooming, the guy feels great, and he’s got a new girlfriend, too. She says she loves him for who he is. You too can get the same bracelet for $19.95.

Ridiculous, right? Well, get this:

This video has 4.5 million views on YouTube. And it ain’t from going viral.

One thing I should point out:

Whoever is running this offer is not linking to this video from a more tame YouTube ad. This entire 5.5-minute melodrama is running on YouTube.

My theory:

YouTube is plucking up that which it has planted. They’ve got tons of users and engagement. They want to ramp up ad sales, so they are making it easy for advertisers right now.

This will last for a while, then they will clamp down. Much like Facebook, who got there sooner, did last year.

As a wise man once said, to everything there is a season. Right now, it is a time to shock, puzzle, and profit on YouTube. And rejoice in your own works. For who knows what will come after?

More wisdom:

It is also a time to subscribe.

To my email newsletter, in case you are interested. Click here and see where it takes you.

Blackjack positioning

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Al Ries and Jack Trout invented the term positioning. They then wrote a book with that title. In it, they say positioning is a hook in your prospect’s brain from which you can hang your product.

Fine. That’s once you’ve got an established position.

But how do you get that hook in your prospect’s brain? Throwing a clothes hanger at somebody’s head will only make it bounce off.

What you need instead is a spear. Something with a very small, very sharp point, which can pierce your prospect’s thick defenses (his skull) and lodge in the soft gray matter inside.

When people talk about positioning, they often talk about taking control of a part of the market. “We want to be the Apple of dog nail clippers.” Meaning, we only want a sliver of that market that’s willing to spend like crazy.

That’s one way to do positioning.

This is the flip side. Instead of thinking about cutting down your market… think about cutting down your product and its functionality.

Once upon a time, Perry Marshall was an experienced and successful online marketer. But that’s a floppy, blunt object, incapable of piercing any skull.

So Perry dropped all his copywriting knowledge… funnel building knowledge… positioning knowledge… and became “The AdWords Guy.” At least to people who had never heard of him before. His business exploded, way beyond his previous success.

Because it can be easier to sell a fragment of the thing rather than the whole. At the same price. Or even for more.

Many people rebel at this. No wonder. Our minds work additively. If you have A plus B plus C, then that’s at least as much as A alone, right?

Not in positioning.

Positioning math is more like blackjack. You know how the game goes. You keep getting cards, trying to get as close as possible to 21. But if you ever go over, you’re BUST. You lose.

Same thing with positioning. Keep adding ideas to your position, and you’re BUST. You lose. And you don’t need to go over 21 ideas either.

So swallow your pride — or fight your client’s pride. The dealer will offer to deal you more cards. Wave him off. One, sharp, deadly idea. No more.

And now a confession:

I used to have a daily email newsletter on copywriting, marketing, and persuasion. No more. From now on, it’s a newsletter on positioning. For today only. Click here to subscribe.

Let’s play master and servant

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Gary Bencivenga said that sales copy needs to only do two things to be successful. The first is to open the sale. The second is to close the sale.

In a similar vein, I think you need to only do two things to finish any copy project. The first is to sit down to work. The second is to actually write.

You might think I’m being silly, but I’m serious.

To show you how serious, let tell you about a little game I like to play. Maybe you will like to play it too. It’s called master and servant.

Each night, I get out my riding whip, and, in the role of master, I make a list of tasks for the servant to accomplish the next day.

In the morning, I put the riding whip away and, in the role of servant, I blindly begin to follow the master’s written orders.

So I sit down to work on a particular copy project. Thing 1 above is complete.

But now what? The servant is lazy. He will whine and invent excuses. Soon, he will get up and quit rather than starting to do any work.

So in the role of master again, I’ll warm up the servant with some trivial subtasks.

For example, one of today’s tasks was an email for some real estate agents. And so I told the servant, “Open up a new text document. Write SUBJECT across the top. That’s where the subject line will go one day. And then just paste in the three or four URLs you will get research from. That is all you have to do.”

The servant, who is gullible as well as lazy, does as he’s told. “I’m finished,” he says. “Can I go now?”

So the master gives him a few more easy subtasks. And a few more. Soon enough, the servant is huffing, puffing, sweating, and working, without realizing that time is passing and the project is moving forward, under his own initiative. Thing 2 above is complete.

Gene Schwartz said that you have to work hard to succeed. He then clarified. You don’t have to work long hours. You just have to work hard, with great intensity.

But how do you do that?

I subscribe to the idea, which I first read from Cal Newport, that procrastination is at bottom uncertainty. Uncertainty about what you have to do. Uncertainty that it will work. Uncertainty that such a massive project could ever get finished.

So much thinking. So much personal attachment. So much stress. No wonder you can’t get any work done.

That’s why it helps to split your personality into two. Hammer and anvil. Master and servant. It’s a lot like life.

“I’m finished. Can I go now?”

Yes, you’re free to go if you like. But if you want to give your servant some useful reading to do later, click here and subscribe to my daily email newsletter.

2020 isn’t done with us yet

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Last Wednesday, a troop of scientist monkeys was circling in a helicopter above the Utah desert, when they spotted something that shouldn’t be there.

The scientists landed to take a closer look.

There, in the middle of Road Runner country, among red cliffs and tumbleweeds and a whole lot of nothing, stood a rectangular silver pillar. It was about 10 feet tall, and about 1 foot in width and depth.

The mysterious object had no apparent purpose or function. There was no clue who or what had created it.

So in an instinctive show of excitement, the scientists started hooting and throwing sticks and scratching their armpits.

But let me take a step back. I found out about this from a BBC article titled:

“Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert”

I clicked on this article among dozens of other tempting news headlines. So I asked myself why. The news aspect was one, the curiosity another. But that’s clearly not all.

It’s that word “monolith.” Maybe you see where this is going.

A monolith in the middle of the desert ties into Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001. You know the famous scene, with the orgasmic music and the sun rising as a monkey smashes some tapir bones.

I thought this monolith article was speaking directly to me. But sadly no. ​​The BBC knew what it was doing.

​​Millions of other people made the same 2001 connection. One twitter intellectual writing under the account @MonolithUtah commented “We come in peace.” Another wrote “2020 isn’t done with us yet #utahmonolith.”

This has obvious applications if you’re writing sales copy. In fact, marketer Joe Sugarman exploited the underlying principle behind this monolith story to sell all kinds of devices, from smoke detectors to remote car starters.

That’s something I wrote about in more detail when I originally wrote this article and sent it out to my newsletter subscribers.

In case you’d like to be on my newsletter, so you don’t miss any more copywriting tricks that link into popular science fiction movies, click here and subscribe.

How to succeed in copywriting more than the other guy

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Legend says that, as Wall Street titan Bernard Baruch was nearing the end of his long and influential life, somebody asked him how he did it.

How did he herd a bunch of U.S. presidents and countless other bull-sized egos, and get them to go where he would? Baruch’s answer was simple:

“Figure out what people want, and show them how to get it.”

Interesting. Except… Did Baruch really say it? Just like that?

That’s how the story was told once, in a closed-door session of top copywriters and rich and powerful direct marketing execs.

But I wanted to use this anecdote in a book I’m writing. So I decided to find some context and proof for this quote. And there went a morning, about two hours of work, straight out the window.

First, a random Google search… then more in-depth reading about Bernard Baruch… then searching through a database of old newspapers and magazines… and finally downloading several BB biographies.

Nothing. The closest I found was a similar Dale Carnegie quote, along with other blogs that refer to the same second-hand source (Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar) that I already knew about.

In the end, I gave up and told the anecdote much as I told it above. But I started it with, “Copywriter Gary Bencienga once told a story…” Because I couldn’t confirm that the damn story really was true, or that the quote really was as Gary B. said it was.

So were the two hours of fruitless research a waste?

Yes. But I don’t regret it. I enjoy researching and obsessively tracking down original sources. The fact I get to do it is a perk of how I make money.

But wait — there’s more!

Because I’ve long had a feeling that obsessive research can be a competitive advantage. It can surface gold where you’re only looking for silver.

And along these lines, I hit upon the following quote today. It’s by a man who took his obsessive copywriting research… and turned it into a Park Avenue penthouse and a world-class modern art collection. Take it away Gene Schwartz:

“This is what makes success. There’s nothing else in the world that makes success as much as this. I will take the best copywriter in the world who is sloppy and careless, and match him against a good copy cub, and two out of three times, the sloppiness of the great person will be beaten by the carefulness of the other person. […] The person who is the best prepared and the most knowledgeable makes the most money. It’s so simple!”

In case you want to be knowledgeable and prepared, at least when it comes to marketing and copywriting, you might like my daily email newsletter. Click here if you want to subscribe.