Category: Closing

Copywriting Year One

In my first year freelancing, I read 15 books, bought 3 courses, signed 14 clients and made $107k…. here are my 11 rules.

There’s no need to “be ready.” Stop spinning your wheels, release the brakes, ignore fear and learn your lessons as you go.

Avoid project work. You can eliminate the early anxiety around the “feast and famine” of freelancing by focusing on retainer-based offers. Get some work, gain some confidence, stack some cash.

The most important skill isn’t getting clients, it’s keeping them.

The “best niche” exists at the intersection of work you enjoy doing and who has money. The short answer to “who has money?” is rich guys and B2B.

There are two dimensions to the game: your ability to position yourself and your copywriting skill level. Progress stalls if you secretly favor working on one over the other.

Don’t get memed into thinking hand-copying sales letters and ads isn’t the greatest thing you can do to improve your skill level.

Clients aren’t looking for years of experience or fancy credentials. They’re just looking for a high-quality sample of something similar to what they need.

If you can summon “flow” every day, you are never going to struggle.

As Twitter’s greatest teacher @abrasivisms hammered home to me, direct response is more about making offers than writing copy.

There is a not-insignificant percentage of your overall annual effort that should be spent meditating on how to best procure and promote results-based testimonials for your work.

The barrier to entry is so low and the demand so high that it’s easy just to drift around and make a good living. You have to desire to grow and expand your powers, woo bigger clients, kill others, work on bolder campaigns, risk failure to meet with glory.

P.S.P. French

How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success

They don’t make covers how they used to

Rating: 10/10
Pick up your copy on Amazon

Summary

One of the greatest books ever written about copywriting isn’t even a book about copywriting. Dale Carnegie called it “The most helpful and inspiring book on salesmanship that I have ever read.”

It’s the memoir/manual of Frank Bettger, a man who went from failed insurance salesman at 29 to the owner of a country estate and one of the best salesmen in America at 40. The tips Bettger gives inside the book are so drop-dead simple that anyone can buy the book and immediately start applying them to become a better salesman, a better copywriter or a better marketer who is more efficient, more profitable and more valuable to their company.

I particularly enjoyed the bonus chapter, Benjamin Franklin’s Secret of Success and What It Did for Me.

Notes

  • You need to know how much your calls are worth. Bettger kept records of his sales calls for 12 months. He made 1,849 calls and earned $4,251 in commission (this was a lot of money at the time). This meant that every call Bettger made was worth $2.30. Keeping and analyzing his call records allowed Bettger to eventually earn $19.00 for every call he made.
  • Enthusiasm is everything. If you don’t feel enthusiastic, just act like it anyway.
  • When you show a man what he wants, he’ll move heaven and earth to get it.
  • Ask more questions to increase the effectiveness of your sales interviews. The word ‘Why’ is your secret weapon.
  • The biggest reason salesmen lose sales is because they talk too much. You can’t know too much, but you can talk too much.
  • Always smile and remember people’s names. If you have trouble with this, fix it (Bettger goes into detail about how).
  • One of the best ways to improve your salesmanship is to master public speaking.
  • Looking back at his career, Bettger’s biggest regret was that he didn’t spend twice as much time calling on, studying, and servicing his customers’ interests.
  • The average successful sale goes through four steps: (1) Attention, (2) Interest, (3) Desire, (4) Action.

Quotes

“Selling is the easiest job in the world if you work it hard, but the hardest job in the world if you try to work it easy.”

“The most important secret of salesmanship is to find out what the other fellow wants, then help him find the best way to get it.”

“Many times there is a parade of thoughts passing across the mind of a man, and unless we give him a chance to do some of the talking, we have no way of knowing what he is thinking.”

“Never forget a customer; never let a customer forget you.”

“Prospecting is like shaving … if you don’t do something about it every day, first thing you know, you’ll be a bum.”

How to Go From Failure to Success

One of the greatest books ever written about copywriting isn’t even a book about copywriting.

Dale Carnegie called it “The most helpful and inspiring book on salesmanship that I have ever read.”

It’s the memoir/manual of Frank Bettger, a man who went from failed insurance salesman at 29 to the owner of a country estate and one of the best salesmen in America at 40.

And the tips Bettger gives inside the book are so drop-dead simple that anyone can buy the book and immediately start applying them to become a better salesman, a better copywriter or a better marketer who is more efficient, more profitable and more valuable to their company.

These tips are both timeless and foolproof.

Because they don’t involve complicated scripts or fancy closes or anything you would need to memorize or indeed anything that remotely resembles hard work.

And they’re so simple that once you fully learn them and internalize them, they’ll be part of your character for the rest of your life.

In addition to that, there’s one particular technique that involves just four words.

Four words that can turn a skeptical client into an enthusiastic buyer on the spot.

It’s like clicking your fingers.

Which is really what it’s all about, isn’t it?

Here’s the link:

https://amzn.to/2yMskRu

Paul French