An ongoing customer (not sure he wants me to share his name) replied to my email yesterday with a “business of copywriting” question:
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Bought [your new 10 Commandments book] just now.
Great email. Keep ripping John.
And if can ask a question…
Im about to close an email marketing brand for a 4k a month deal. (They’ve done so bad in Klaviyo lol)
And the VP is IN. But the brand owner wants to see examples of prior work in supplements…. ugh.
I don’t have any atm. I’ve done mostly saas/tech cold email copywriting. And some small projects in DTC.
You got any “how a genius copywriter handles show us your case studies objection” in your store of knowledge? 😂
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It’s been a long time since I looked for copywriting clients, and even longer before I applied for copywriting jobs where I wasn’t 100% qualified.
But I gave my thoughts to this customer. Maybe they can be useful to you too.
The standard response when a question like this pops up is to tell the copywriter to go write some custom samples, and send the prospective client that.
Of course, that’s really a stab in the dark. What’s going on in the owner’s mind? It might be:
1. Maybe the owner iss not convinced that the copywriter can write compliant or effective copy for supplements, even though he’s written copy in other niches
2. Maybe the owner is not convinced that the style of copy he’s seen from the copywriter is the right way to go (eg. maybe he just wants standard image-heavy ecom emails instead of text-heavy emails)
3. Maybe the owner is not convinced that $4k a month is really a smart expense for his company right now
Custom samples can help in situation 1, but they won’t do anything in situations 2 and 3, or in the dozen other possible situations that might really be underlying the request for prior work. The copywriter would just be wasting his time, and driving the prospective client further away.
Ideally, the copywriter above would already know (or could find out) what the owner is really concerned about, and he could address that directly using completely different approaches in each case, rather than by taking a stab in the dark.
Which brings me back to my 10 Commandments book, specifically to Commandment VIII.
That commandment lays out a little change I made in how I talked to prospective copywriting clients, back when I was hunting after such.
I estimate this little change doubled my closing rate, meaning that for every three or four sales calls I had to get on with prospects, I closed two new clients, instead of just one.
This same stuff, which I discuss in detail in Commandment VIII, could be relevant to the copywriter above, even though it sounds like he’s already dug himself into a bit of a hole.
Maybe the same advice could be useful to you too? If you haven’t yet gotten a copy of my new book, only one way to find out: