the other hand, you may fail even when communicating valuable information if the paper is poorly organized and hard to get at. This isn’t to say that presentation is more important than information. But if presentation falls short, the reader will never gain access to the information and the writer is judged a sorry failure.
Why copywriting is like selling
One of my earliest clients was a guy named Roy Chitwood who owned Max Sacks International, a sales training organization. In working with Roy for several years I attended so many workshops that his catch phrases became drilled into my brain. On the value of training: “School is never out for the sales professional.” On the role of the sales department in the organization: “Nothing happens until somebody sells something.” On the importance of planning: “If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter which road you take.”
Unlike copywriting, personal selling is a contact sport. Salespeople have to psych themselves up to get over rejection and put on their best face for the next appointment. Having an organized system to apply to what may appear an informal activity helps them stay on task (“Once selling becomes a process, it ceases to be a problem”). This may why there are so many sales training courses and methods; most of the students I met in Roy’s classes had taken several courses from different trainers and used them agnostically for inspiration.
Very much like copywriters, salespeople have the job of getting prospects excited about and desirous of a product or service they may not have realized they needed until a moment ago. That’s why it is so helpful to apply the “rules” followed by professional salespeople to your own work as a copywriter. In my class, I spend quite a bit of time on the copywriting/selling analogy and I’m going to do the same here, over the next several posts.
The relationship between copywriting and selling should be seamless in a well-run company: your lead generation efforts serve as the front end of the sales effort, and serve up a steady stream of prospects (or “suspects” as another mentor, Ray Jutkins, used to call them since they have not yet entered your sales process). The better you’ve done your job, the more interested they will be in learning more about your company’s product or service.
Why copywriting is like selling: the process
Copywriters are at their most creative when trying to wriggle out of doing the work at hand. As with the professional salespeople I talked about in the last chapter, applying a system or methodology to an informal process can help you stay focused. It can also insure that you are not overshooting any decision points in the mind of your reader.
Advertising guidebooks are full of acronymic checklists to verify your copy has a logical flow, such as these three taken from Bob Bly’s excellent The Copywriter’s Handbook:
AIDA = Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action ACCA = Awareness, Comprehension, Conviction, Action 4 Ps = Picture, Promise, Prove, Push
In each case the process is to make a connection with your audience, then present your selling argument, then go for the sale or other action. If you look at failed advertising, often the problem is that the copywriter got the sequence mixed up—for example, leaping to a sales pitch before you’ve hooked the reader in, or asking for the order before you’ve demonstrated the value of what you have to sell.
My favorite checklist is the one taught by my old client Max Sacks International, and it is something I regularly use in auditing my own work. Since this was developed for use by professional salespeople, I’ll add a translation for copywriters.
1 Approach. How are you going to open the dialog? What will you do to engage your audience?
2 Qualification. Make sure the prospect does have buying authority; for copywriters, hopefully the media department has done this job for you.
3 Agreement on need. Make it clear what you’re talking about, then define a problem to be solved. Easy to do in a face to face environment where you can see a head nod, much harder in the remote medium of copywriting where you have to visualize audience reaction.
4 Sell the company. If the prospect doesn’t find the salesperson or the company credible, they aren’t going to buy no matter how appealing the pitch. That’s why you sell the company before presenting your offer. For copywriters this is done with presentation and tone as much as with specific statements.
5 Fill the need. Here is the meat of your selling proposition, presented only AFTER every other requirement has been met.
6 Act of Commitment. Ask for the order. Tell your reader specifically what you want them to do, and emphasize how easy and risk-free it is to do it.
7 Cement the sale. A salesperson will reiterate the commitment that has been made so the new customer does not cancel as soon as they leave the office. A copywriter will do this throughout the message.
Why copywriting is like selling: what makes buyers buy
Professional salespeople never forget they are selling to a human being, because that person is right in front of them. Copywriters, though, can become confused. They satisfy the requirement of filling a technical need, and forget there is a person signing the purchase order or keying in the credit card number. Unless personal emotional gratification is delivered, the sale may fall through because your solution is not perceived as relevant or important.
Why do buyers buy? Bob Stone, in his classic Successful Direct Marketing Methods, details the two categories of human wants: The desire to gain, and the desire to avoid loss.
Robert Collier, the “Giant of the Mails” who was at his peak in the 1930s, lists six prime motives of human action:
1 Love
2 Gain
3 Duty
4 Pride
5 Self-indulgence
6 Self-preservation
And here are Roy Chitwood’s six buying motives:
1 Desire for gain (usually financial)
2 Fear of loss (again, usually financial)
3 Comfort and convenience
4 Security and protection
5 Pride of ownership
6 Satisfaction of emotion
Note that every one of these is EMOTIONAL…people buy emotionally, not logically. This is true even when selling business products to people in a business setting, because people are still people.
Why copywriting is like selling: features, advantages and benefits
If you’ve been following the selling sequence you are now at the point where you have a good idea of the buyer’s interests and concerns. It’s time to show how your product and service matches those interests and solves those problems because it always does, right?
A tyro copywriter will do this with features: throwing out a razzle-dazzle of technical information and forgetting to tie it back to the reasons people buy. (Remember, prospects may evaluate a product logically but their ultimate buying decision will always
