How To Deal With Reality As A Salesman
A lot of copywriters and internet marketing guys make the mistake of ignoring reality when they sit down to pen their sales letters. By this, I mean that they’ll assume that their reader hasn’t got any knowledge of the product they’re selling or the market that they’re selling it to, and write a sales letter based on that falsehood.
This is the wrong approach… and I’ll tell you why in this article.
Unfortunately, We Have To Work Within The Confines Of Reality
Sometimes I’ll read a sales letter/product review and internally shudder. I’m not a legendary copywriter or amazing salesman, but I’d like to think that at the very least my sales letters are realistic.
By that, I don’t mean that I say, “This product is 2/10 but if you really need it, buy it.” My sales letters are designed to sell stuff as much as anyone else’s.
What I do mean though is that some sales letters are based in fairy-tale land, and that makes them less effective.
“I popped this pill and I gained 50lbs of muscle.”
“Not only will this course give you more money, but it’ll also make your health problems go away.”
My favourite version of this is the coffee habit thing that a lot of marketers use.
“If you drink 5 coffees a day and it costs $3 per coffee, then you should be able to find the $4995 for this course easily!”
If you’re trying to sell something, then you need to think about what your customer is like, and what your customer wants. You then have to build some idea of their reality in your mind so that you don’t say something stupid. Like a good story, if you say one incongruous thing (like, you can make an extra $5k a year from quitting coffee,) you’ll lose the reader’s attention and trust.
Only Remove Reality Constraints From Your Customer When Giving Them Their Solution
Some people will read this and think, “But Jamie, surely a sales letter is about creating a fictional reality in which people are living a better life due to their product?”
At least, I hope some of you were thinking that, because this is my next point.
There’s only one situation in which you can ignore reality in your sales letters. That’s when you’re creating the future… and only when you’re relating it to your product and its realistic effects.
Let’s say you’re selling a vitamin pill to people with weak bones or something, and this pill makes them feel better and strengthens their joints or something.
By all means, exaggerate or vocalise their problems – “Some days, you feel like you don’t want to get out of bed.” Don’t break reality here though by writing something like, “Doesn’t having sore ankles make you want to roll up and die?” or, “Having bad joints will make your wife leave you!”
That would be an affront to reality. Keep it real. The benefits though, they’re a different story.
“Wouldn’t it be great if you could spend more time with your wife and make your marriage better with tons of adventure-filled days out which you just can’t do now?”
“Imagine being so healthy that you could not just get out of bed, but literally jump out of bed!”
“But Jamie, isn’t that super evil sales sorcery? Isn’t that breaking reality too?”
Every Sales Pitch Is Aspirational
A lot of people struggle with the idea that sales is an immoral act. They think that selling is lying, that talking up a product is something that you shouldn’t do. We should all buy everything based on the technical specifications.
There are a lot of salesmen who’ll use dastardly tricks and cross the territory into deception at points, but for the most part, there’s no contradiction.
Sales material isn’t deceptive, it’s aspirational.
When you suffer from a problem, you don’t want to hear, “This medicine will give you an incremental improvement of 3% in your respiratory functions until the virus passes. ”You want to hear, “This stuff will get rid of your sore throat ASAP.”
With that, we come back to talking about reality.
People identify with a certain story. Zero-to-hero. In every sales letter, we’re creating a sense of the zero-to-hero narrative. However, you won’t hook a reader if neither the zero or hero are realistic representations of their reality.
You need to create the reality of the zero through research into the readers’ problems. Then you need to create the hero by an aspirational narrative, not an unrealistic one.
How do you do that?
Unlimited Time, Unlimited Money, Unlimited Resources; If Everything Were Awesome
Your reader will have a set of problems. There’ll be a set of solutions for most things, and hopefully you’re selling one of those solutions (as opposed to something that won’t help your reader solve their problem.)
These problems don’t exist in a vacuum. They come with a certain set of conditions that are based on your customer’s life. Hence the need for research. You need to address these conditions. Some of the more obvious are:
- Time
- Money
- Resources
- Location
You get the idea.
If you don’t do this, then you’ll fall into the “not based in reality” problems mentioned above. Here’s an example.
The other day, I was looking at a Pay-Per-Click Marketing course. The sales letter said that it was great for beginners. However, the price was $3000. Also, you had to commit to spending $1000-2000 in other stuff.
The problem with that sales letter is that it’s pitched somewhere out of reality. You can’t follow the zero-to-hero storyline with a guy making his first few dollars online when your target market needs to start with $5k to start with.
The sales letter could use, “Are you a struggling marketer?” or “Do you make $X but want to make $XXX online?” zero-to-hero storylines. But it didn’t – it tried to pitch to one target market with a story for another.
An equivalent would be me trying to sell protein powder to Arnold Schwarzenegger by telling him that a school bully would laugh at his twig-legs.
Your target market, whatever it’ll be, will have a certain set of life conditions which you cannot ignore or assume don’t exist.
Final Thoughts
A lot of copywriters and internet marketers make the mistake of ignoring reality in their sales letters. Whether it’s due to not doing any research or not wanting to admit that there are alternatives to a product out there, it’s a bad idea to for them to do this.
Your readers aren’t just mindless zombies waiting to hit the buy button. They exist with certain criteria and objections you’ll need to raise and dismiss if you want to keep them as readers or sell them something.
P.S. One big way in which people fail to do this is when it comes to addressing free alternatives to a product. If you want to know how to get past this particular objection, read this article on the subject.