Salesmanship

“… 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.