Why don’t I be a white-collar salesman? Straight commission jobs were probably relatively easy to get. Maybe I could make a good living. It would be like being in business for myself, which I’d always fantasized about.
Even though I’d never worn a suit and tie in my life, I went to the store that morning, bought myself a cheap get up – you should have seen me trying to figure out how to tie that bloody noose around my neck – and faked my way into a job selling phone systems and long distance services in Toronto on straight commission.
My family nearly starved. But I refused to give up. It was a lot of driving around from place to place you know, and I can still remember having to pull over every 20 miles or so to pump up a slow leak in one of my car tires that I couldn’t afford to fix. That’s how broke I was.
Anyway, long story short. Necessity is very often the Mother of invention, and my boss lent me this VHS tape that Mark Victor Hansen had put together called “38 Ways To Close The Sale”, and I sat in from of the TV literally for hours modeling his words, and his facial expressions, and his body language, and started using the techniques.
Immediately I started calling on the biggest accounts that I had any hope of penetrating, and trying to get them to let me do a free analysis on their phone bills, which is what we were using to get our foot in the door. And I got through to this nice sounding woman who I convinced to let me come by and pick up her phone bill, and when I saw it I nearly died. For the kinds of accounts I was calling on it was huge.
About a week or so later, the analysis was done, and it was favorable, I could save her company a boat load of money, and I made up my mind that when I went to visit her to present my findings that I wasn’t leaving without a signed order. And I drilled practiced and rehearsed the “copy” that I would use to make it happen.
I had rebuttals for every possible objection, a series of carefully crafted graduated commitment questions that I would ask, and I knew exactly – to the word – what I was going to say when it came time for her to say, “sounds interesting, I really love these savings, I just need to talk it over with some of the other folks here and I’ll get back to you, probably week after next.”
And low and behold, I made that sale, and it was the copy that made the difference. And it turned out that if I hadn’t got the sale right then and there, it would have been lost, because the company we replaced came in and matched our rates as soon as they got wind of it.
The techniques I learned from Mark Victor Hansen, and other masters of direct selling literally saved my financial life, and I used them over and over again. In fact I still use these same principles in my web copywriting today, 18 yeas later, and they work.
Mike Dolpies: Now you’ve really got my curiosity going. What did you say to her to get her to sign on right away?
Daniel Levis: Well you know I’d have to look at my files to see what the exact words were, but it was a tentative close. I told her that if we could get the ball rolling while she was doing whatever she had to do internally to cement the deal, it would mean x dollars in additional savings to the company, and on the off chance something went off the rails, no big deal, I’d just rip up the contract.
And I still close like this today on the web, by making the decision sound tentative. Of course there is a powerful force at work on the buyer, once they sign that contract, or put their credit card into the shopping cart and hit send.
It’s called commitment and consistency. Becoming inconsistent with our prior commitments, even if those commitments are tentative, goes against what we’ve been conditioned to do.
That’s why I never ask anybody to buy anything. It’s way too final. All I ask people to do is give it a try, and then decide.
Mike Dolpies: That’s an amazing insight. When did the light bulb go off for you that made you realize just how valuable the skill of persuasion really is?
Daniel Levis: Well the light bulb has gone off a few times. But probably the biggest AHA moment was having a chance to work with Clayton Makepeace.
Getting an insider’s look at the world of big time, royalty-based copywriting, really opened my eyes to the kind of incomes that are possible, when you can partner with an established business that has an existing file of customers to work with, or strong affiliate relationships that can drive a lot of qualified traffic to your copy. The key is finding the right client relationships.
It’s really a whole different dynamic, where the copywriter becomes entrepreneur, and actively selects the clients that can bring those assets to the table.
Another big realization was working with Michael Cage, who is just a master of the teleseminar. A live, virtual event, where you have a chance to bring your copy to life with the human voice, combined with the leverage of telecommunications and the Internet have probably made a bigger impact on my information marketing business than anything else.
There’s nothing quite as satisfying as being able to write up a few e-mails, inviting your subscribers to a live teleseminar that you can deliver without ever leaving your house, and with a little luck netting 5 figures in a little over an hour. And again it all boils down to communication skills, which in turn rely very heavily on copy.
Mike Dolpies: Of course you weren’t born a world-class copywriter so what was the progression and who were some of your early teachers?
Daniel Levis: Oh boy, that’s a good one. Well as I mentioned earlier, I was highly influenced by Mark Victor Hansen, other folks I studied intently were Frank Bettger, Tom Hopkins, and J. Douglas Edwards. These guys were all direct selling giants, and they influence my copy to this day.
Later when I started getting into lead generation instead of cold calling in the mid nineties, I was heavily influenced by The Robert Collier Letter book, which I happened to stumble on. So Robert Collier has been a huge influence. And of course John Caples was another old time great that I’ve really been fascinated with, and learned a lot from.
And of course the modern day greats like Clayton Makepeace, John Carlton, Dan Kennedy, and Ted Nicholas are a big inspiration.
Learning to become a copywriter is a very organic sort of process you know. It’s really a matter of keeping your eyes wide open to human nature, reading and studying, and even copying out in your own hand the copy of the masters, to get the flow and the rhythm into your sub-conscious, and most importantly going out there and getting your hands dirty.
A lot of people I see who are getting into this are stuck in learning mode, and they’re actively avoiding opportunities to go out there and fail. They think they’ve got to be perfect, and so they don’t take the risk of putting their copy out there so they can learn from their mistakes.
And it hurts when you bomb, it really does, but it forces you to learn.
The most valuable learning you can possibly do as a copywriter is seeing the results of your work. It doesn’t matter how perfect your copy looks, it’s what people do with it when it arrives in the mail, or on their computer screen that counts. And until you can get a lot of experience with writing the copy, and getting the copy out there, and seeing the results, you’re just not going to hit your stride.
There’s a kind of magical moment, when you get your wings. And you just know that what you write is probably going to at least break even. You just kind of get a sixth sense for that. It’s hard to explain.
And the web is just ideal for accelerating your learning. It’s just too easy as a copywriter to market information on the Internet. I mean for $15 or $20 bucks a month you can put up a website, and for as little as 10 or 20 cents a click you can drive traffic, and test as many things as you like. That’s where the real education comes in. That and building a large swipe file of idea starters that you read and work with regularly.
Like anything else practice makes proficient.
Mike Dolpies: Does anything sell itself?
Daniel Levis: Well no. I mean you may make a few sales by simply showing up, and saying something stupid, like so much of the advertising you see these days, but that’s not selling. There’s an old saw that says tie an order pad to a dog’s tail and sooner or later he’ll come back with an order. Well that makes sense because dogs are lovable, but ads aren’t lovable. People detest advertising.
So I think it’s really important for everyone to realize that any advertising you do has got to be very focused on making a sale, or obtaining some kind of action that leads to a sale.
If you want your advertising to be a profit center for your business, rather than an expense, you’ve got to keep selling as the primary objective, and let branding and public awareness of your business take a back seat, as secondary by-products of your marketing.
Every piece of advertising you do needs to be trackable, and measurable, and give you a known and immediate return on your investment.
Now I’m not saying you need to make a profit when you advertise. Actually I advise against it. If you’ve got a profitable campaign, the first thing you should be doing is expanding the number of eyeballs that see it until it’s no longer profitable. Smart marketers make initial sales to acquire customers. Dumb marketers make initial sales to make a profit.
Customers are much more important than profits on the front end of your business, because the real profits come from the back end … the follow-on products that you sell to those customers.
There really is no free lunch in direct marketing. The time honored business values of delivering a quality product, backed by superior service, and giving value far and above the price paid are essential to your success, because you live or die on those subsequent sales, or lack of them.
There’s no point making the first sale, if you can’t make the second. Killer copy can make that first sale, but it can’t compensate for a lousy product when it comes to making the second.
I suppose if anything sells itself, it’s the third or fourth or fifth product a customer buys from you right? But even then, you’ve got to get them excited about what you’re selling. You’ve still got to go full throttle with your copy to keep them on board.
Mike Dolpies: Well put. How do you hit the correct emotions with the written word?
Daniel Levis: Well that’s a great question, you know. And the answer is: study your market to find out what emotions are already dominant in their thinking. The tricky part is they won’t always come right out and tell you, at least not directly.
I tell my students that the first step is to know your prospect; before you get too wrapped up in the product you’re selling. Find a few of them in the flesh, and hang out with them.
Talk to them about the problem the product you’re selling solves, or the opportunity it creates, and figure out how they feel about it. And this takes a little digging, to get past the superficial answers, and down to the emotional layer. And you know you’re there, at the emotional layer, when they say things that reflect on their self-image.
For example, when you say to someone, why did you learn to line dance? Well they’re going to tell you what they think you want to hear. They might say, because it’s fun, or because it gets us out of the house and we meet people. But if you probe a little deeper, you might find that every time they come home from line dancing they tend to get a little frisky, if you know what I mean.
So you might create a story of a couple on the dance floor, with intentionally suggestive language and imagery that suggests line dancing is an opportunity to rekindle your love life. Kind of like the country songs you know, where the gal is out there on the floor all dolled-up and the guy sees other guys looking at her.
That’s a self-image reflection, being the lucky guy who has what all the other guys want, and the gal who’s the object of their desire.
Purely speculative on my part, because I don’t know the first thing about line dancing, but the point being, it takes a little bit of probing and personal involvement to illicit people’s unconscious motivations for doing things.
Other methods of research for uncovering your market’s fears, desires and frustrations? Read relevant blog and discussion forum comments, those are a gold mine of information. Get a feel for the content they’re interacting with on referring sites, the sites they’re on before they come to yours. Survey them.
Once you’ve got your copy up and running, you can put an extra field on your opt in box online that says something to the effect of, what’s your biggest question, goal, or frustration about x, and you can often infer a dominant resident emotion from the responses you get.
And of course testing. At the end of the day, you can only be sure you’re hitting the right emotional hot buttons from the relative results that you’re getting. You know some marketers are inveterate testers, some are big on surveys, I think you really need both, and you need to also get out there and talk intimately with people who are qualified to buy whatever it is you’re selling.
Too many Internet marketers are isolated from their markets, because it’s not necessary to talk to people to take their money. But you can sell a lot more if you do.
Mike Dolpies: What are the absolute essentials in copy writing – meaning, forget these and you’re dead?
Daniel Levis: If you can’t stop people in their tracks and get their attention, and turn that attention into interest in 10 seconds or less, you’re dead before you even begin. Too many people spend too much time worrying about how pretty and professional their website looks, or what it says somewhere in paragraph 36.
But none of it matters if nobody reads your copy. And the thing that gets them to decide they’re going to start reading your copy is your headline. It’s just common sense right? If people don’t decide to start reading your copy, they’re not going to buy.
So your headline is of key importance, and it has to do three things to be effective at attracting attention, and converting that attention to interest and readership. It has to have an element of curiosity. When people read that headline, it’s got to pose or imply an intriguing question, and point down into the body copy for the answer.
Secondly, it’s got to directly state, or imply, that there’s something here that the reader desperately wants. A problem solved, or a path to opportunity. This is what’s meant by the promise. You make a promise to your reader that if he will just read your copy there will be a pay off of some kind. He or she will obtain pleasure or avoid pain. All promises fall into one of these two categories. We’re all hedonists.
And thirdly, it has to be believable. When people are exposed to your copy, there are really only three reactions. They’re either nodding their heads, thinking, “Yah, that makes sense, maybe there’s something here”. Or they don’t see anything in it for them, which is so often the case when you see a web page that’s all about the seller instead of the buyer. And third, you have this “Yah right, who are they trying to kid, I don’t believe that for a minute” reaction.
Obviously it’s the first reaction, the head nodding reaction that you want to foster. So to answer your question directly, the headline is key, if you write one that bores people because it doesn’t reflect on their self-interest, or fails to stimulate their curiosity in some way, or you cause them to disbelieve what you’re telling them, or if you confuse them, you’re dead. Does that answer your question?
Mike Dolpies: Yes it does, absolutely. What about the actual offer? How does someone come up with an irresistible offer? How can they be sure it’s irresistible?
Daniel Levis: Well it’s something people want badly, and they can’t get anywhere else, isn’t it? Which begs the question, well damn, what do I do now? My product is different, but it’s not that different. And here’s the answer.
Think about why people really buy for a minute. They don’t buy your offer for what it is. They don’t buy the widgets that you’re offering, or the information you’re offering. They don’t even buy the outcomes your widgets or your information can help them achieve. What they’re really buying, secretly, is how those outcomes make them feel.
Implicit within your offer is an outcome, and implicit within that outcome is a feeling that the prospect sees himself experiencing in the future, as a result of accepting your offer.
Well your offer becomes irresistible only when that feeling is irresistible. For example, FedEx’s offer of guaranteed overnight delivery is irresistible not because the package will get there overnight, and not even because if it doesn’t get there overnight the boss is going to have a fit. It’s irresistible because of the confidence and peace of mind, and freedom from stress it gives the sender, you see?
So what does this tell us? Well it says that if you can evoke what’s irresistible to people, which is a desired state of mind, you can differentiate your offer from competitors who have largely similar offers by creating an irresistible feeling in the mind of your customer.
For example, two identical offers, feature wise, might exist for a home study course. Same price, same guarantee, same bonuses, but the offer copy on one promises “speak with confidence and authority”, and the other promises “a standing ovation every time you speak”. Which offer is going to be the winner? Do you see what I’m saying?
Of course the only way to know for sure, is to test.
Mike Dolpies: How can someone ensure their copy is going to be read? Or as I like to say, how can someone stack the odds and feel confident that their copy will be read and responded to?
Daniel Levis: Well it goes back to what I said before about the importance of the headline, and stimulating curiosity, making a powerful promise that taps into the self-interest of the reader, being believable, and staying aligned with the dominant emotion that’s already on the prospect’s mind about the problem you’re promising to help him to solve.
And again, this isn’t something you can guess at. You’ve got to get out there into the market and become one of them, so you can get a feel for what’s going to create these effects in the reader when they’re struck by your headline.
And if you want a headline that’s impossible to ignore, write a short one. And then support it, and extend it with copy that gradually steps down in font size to the body copy. So you’ll have a short headline that immediately captures the attention of the reader. He sees it, and he has no choice but to read it. He can’t look at it, and not read it. It’s too short.
It captures his curiosity and implies a promise, and this draws him down to the sub-head, or up to the pre-head, and into the fascination bullets that appear underneath, and eventually into the body copy. By then he’s got some momentum, and you’ve got him.
From there, you can tell an engaging story, or tease the reader about a secret, and use bucket brigade phrases like, “You wont believe what happened next.” “But that’s not the half of it.” “There’s more to the story”, and so forth, to maintain the momentum. And you can create open loops, by getting them excited about something, and then taking off in another direction, promising to come back to the original thought momentarily.
Those are a few tricks of the trade.
They work, but only if you’ve done your due diligence with respect to researching your target audience to make sure you’re fishing in the right pond with the right bait. Does that make sense?
Mike Dolpies: It certainly does. What advice would you give to help someone use the power of copywriting to short cut success?
Daniel Levis: Hmmm … Read a lot. Copy comes from your unconscious, and when you read a lot, you’re giving your unconscious plenty of fuel to work with. Write a lot. If you force yourself to read for just an hour a day, and write for an hour a day, you’ll move ahead surprisingly quickly. And speak a lot. Speaking and writing feed off each other. Your writing should sound natural when spoken. And your speech should be crisp and accurate, and concise, almost like good writing.
What else? Don’t be shy about promoting yourself and your products, before they’re ready, and before you’re ready. Fail forward fast, and clean the mess up as you go.
Get super curious about human nature and human nurture. Take an interest in people. Pay attention to what motivates them, and how they respond to given stimuli and emotions, and learn how to trigger them with your words.
In short, become a great communicator, which I define as being the right person, communicating the right message, to the right audience, at the right time, and in the right way. If you can do that, you can’t help but succeed.
Mike Dolpies: OK, last question. What lessons can you share from the school of hard knocks?
Daniel Levis: Ah the school of hard knocks. That’s the best school of them all, isn’t it? Probably the two things that have tripped me up most in life are these.
Procrastination, taking too long to take action with something new that I was thinking about doing, but didn’t feel I was ready to do. Essentially underestimating myself, overestimating the difficulty of becoming successful with that new endeavor, thinking I needed to be perfect before launching into it.
And the other is complacency, which is really the other side of the same coin, riding a dead horse too long, clinging to it, perhaps out of a natural aversion to change, and the unknown.
Looking back, I think those where the two lessons I’ve learned when things have turned sour, from time to time.
Mike Dolpies: Well thanks Daniel, this has been great. What can people listening to this do to find out more about you?
Daniel Levis: Your listeners can visit my website at www.sellingtohumannature.com and when you arrive at that site you can take a look at my Masters of Copywriting program.
Masters of Copywriting gives you the collective wisdom of 44 of the top money marketing minds of all time, answering the most pressing questions you’re ever likely to have about crafting effective sales messages. It’s one of the most extensive encyclopedias of salesmanship in print you’ll find anywhere, over 662 searchable pages of insider tips, techniques and strategies for writing super response ads, sales letters, and webpages.
And if you go there right now, you should be able to get some fantastic bonus material as well. I’ve recently added over 6 hours of audio interviews covering Unique Selling Proposition, business to business selling, information marketing and more that you can get free with the program, worth over $228 if purchased separately.
And for a limited time, I’m also offering a free mini critique of your website. I will personally review your website and point out potentially dozens of response boosting ideas to improve your sales and profits. I normally charge $300 for these critiques, because I spend an hour on each one of them, sometimes two, but you get one free, with Masters of Copywriting.
So if you’re serious about becoming a better communicator, and mastering the art of copywriting, head on over to
www.sellingtohumannature.com.
Thanks for having me Mike. It’s been a slice.
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"When did the light bulb go off for you that made you realize just how valuable the skill of persuasion really is?"
- Mike Dolpies 