“Can I move? I’m better when I move.”
There’s a sexy scene in the 1969 classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:
Butch and Sundance are American outlaws who have run away to Bolivia. They’re trying to get work at a Bolivian silver mine.
The boss at the mine wants to see if either Butch or Sundance can shoot a gun. What a joke. Sundance is the fastest and deadliest gun in the West.
So the boss throws a rock 30 feet away. “Hit that,” he says.
Sundance straightens his arm… takes aim… fires and misses.
The boss spits on the ground. He turns around and starts to walk away.
“Can I move?” Sundance asks.
“Move?” the boss says. “What the hell you mean move?”
In a split second, Sundance squats down, pulls out his gun, shoots the rock and then shoots it again while it’s midair, splitting it in two.
In other words:
It’s not common sense… but sometimes you get better results if you give people some space to move.
A while back, I read an academic paper about something called the BYAF compliance method.
BYAF = but you are free.
You make a request, and you tell people they are free to say no. It’s supposed to double the number of yeses you get.
It also goes against all copywriting dogma.
Copywriters will tell you that you should close off all doors… conclusively answer all objections… and PUSH PUSH PUSH for the sale.
So who’s right?
The BYAF crowd has 42 scientific studies on its side.
The “slam all the doors shut” copywriters have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of sales behind them.
You might think the conclusion is clear. But I think it really depends on who you’re dealing with.
For example, Jim Camp was a negotiation expert who worked with Fortune 500 execs while they negotiated multi-billion-dollar deals.
One of the big tenets of his negotiation system was allowing people to say no.
It didn’t mean ending the negotiation… in fact, no was just the beginning.
Because Camp said that in the kinds of negotiations he was involved in, “slamming all the doors shut” so your prospect feels caged in and only has the option you want him to take… well, that was a recipe for an abrupt end to the negotiation, without ever being welcome back for round two.
Does this apply in copywriting?
I definitely think so.
Sure, there are markets where people need you to be a German Shepherd, barking at them so they make their way into the fold in an orderly fashion.
But there are other markets, equally as profitable or more so, where it’s better to allow people to move before you ask them to shoot.
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